[News] 4th AI Olympics with RealAIGym Competition at IJCAI 2026

[Dennis Mronga]

Dear all,   

 

We are excited to announce the 4th AI Olympics with RealAIGym, a competition focused on advancing artificial intelligence and robotics, taking place at IJCAI-ECAI 2026. We invite motivated students and researchers in AI, machine learning, reinforcement learning, optimal control, and related areas to participate in this unique challenge.  

 

Visit our website https://ai-olympics.dfki-bremen.de for more details.  

 

The AI Olympics focuses on advancing the field of agile real-robot control by providing a set of standard dynamic tasks on classical underactuated robotic platforms, such as the Acrobot and Pendubot. The challenge is to develop a global control policy to solve the classic swing-up problem: The robot must be brought from arbitrary initial states into an upright position while remaining robust against external disturbances. The twist: all control policies must be developed exclusively on CloudPendulum, an online-accessible two-link robotic testbed. With only limited time available, teams must develop a successful swing-up strategy from scratch with no prior knowledge of the system model. 

 

To express your interest and receive email updates about the challenge, click here: [Expression of Interest for Participation] 

 

Key Dates:  

30. June 2026                         Registration Deadline 

01. June - 15. July 2026      Qualification stage, solutions and 2-4-page report to be submitted at the end 

31. July 2026                           Qualification stage winners announced and invited to IJCAI competition 

07. August 2026                    Submit revised reports 

15. - 21. August 2026          Final competition at IJCAI-ECAI, evaluation of the controllers 

Prizes: The competition winners will have the opportunity to win prizes worth over $2000 combined sponsored by Cubemars!   

 

Don't miss this opportunity to showcase your skills, learn from experts in the field, and contribute to the advancement of AI and robotics. We look forward to your participation in the AI Olympics at IJCAI-ECAI 2026!  

 

Best regards, 

The organizing committee 

 

Shivesh Kumar, Chalmers University 

Raphael Stöckner, Chalmers University 

Dennis Mronga, DFKI RIC 

Shubham Vyas, DFKI RIC 

Felix Wiebe, DFKI RIC 

Frank Kirchner, DFKI-RIC & University of Bremen