Smart City Robotics Competition 2025
23-25 September 2025
CENTRE:MK Milton Keynes, UK
Free Entry for Spectators, Teams & Exhibitors
Sponsored by
About the event
The Smart City Robotics Competition 2025, the flagship event in MK Tech Week, will involve team challenges, a tech exhibition, an evening symposium and robot demonstrations. You can participate or come along, the event is free and open to the public in centre:mk. The competition will run from Tuesday 23 September with the final in the afternoon of Thursday 25 September.
You will see below the 5 Episodes that teams of university students and industry engineers will be tackling. You can sign up as a team or contact us to join a team. The challenges involve social interactions in a coffee shop or as a home assistant; mobile manipulation to open a door, or pack shopping; and flying drones for emergency medicine.
The Exhibitors and Sponsors will be able to present during the event to the tech community and open to the public. This includes evening event opportunities with policy makers and VIP engagement, an exciting way to raise the profile of emerging technology and robotics. Milton Keynes hosted UK Government AI Safety Summit in 2023, is the 2nd fastest growing city in the UK and the 8th City in the UK for Tech Innovation.
The previous 2023 event received global news coverage by 30 individual news articles. The competition is organised by Smart City Consultancy, supported by Milton Keynes City Council and the centre:mk, and is part of the European Robotics League, from euRobotics.
Agenda
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Day 1
Monday 22 Sept 2025
Early competition teams arrival and exhibitors.
Pre-setup: Secure storage in centre:mk
All week: Self-driving shuttle tours
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Day 2
Tuesday 23 Sept 2025
Morning: Setup for Competition (Teams and Episodes). Setup for Exhibition
Afternoon: Teams first mapping and practice
Evening: MK Tech Week Symposium
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Day 3
Wednesday 24 Sept 2025
All day: Competition practice. Exhibition. Schools visit and talks from Beverly Clarke
Evening: Team and Sponsor Event. Code for Life live webinar: Introduction to teaching coding
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Day 4
Thursday 25 Sept 2025
Morning: Competition final practice, followed by Heats. Exhibition and robot demonstrations.
Afternoon: Competition Finals. Competition team awards!
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Full Agenda
Episodes
The Smart City Robotics Competition will feature five episodes, each presenting a unique challenge for the participating robots, in a real physical environment.
The episodes will be judged on qualities such as accuracy, damage, completeness, human interaction and time.
1. Deliver Coffee Shop Orders
Robots take orders from new customers at their table, collect the order from the counter and deliver to the order. This is a challenging environment to navigate, interact with people and safely deliver coffee orders.
4. Select and Pack Shopping
Given a shopping order, the challenge will be to navigate a shopping area to find products on the shelf, safely grasp the product and carry it to the delivery container, without dropping or damaging any products, in the fastest time possible.
2. Through the Door
The robot will navigate a doorway, requiring it to operate the door handle and open the door. This requires a good understanding of motion planning and control.
5. Drone Medical Deliver
This episode requires flying robots to safely navigate the scene and make a delivery for urgent medicine.
3. Assisting a Person in their Home
A person with limited mobility asks the robot to retrieve an object in the home. The robot will need to communicate with empathy and find a requested item on the table, pick it up, and pass it to the person safely hand.
Be part of the experience
Sponsorship Opportunities
Promote, Recruit, Connect with Tech Industry, Government and Emerging talent from leading UK/European universities
Register to Compete
Enter your team for the 3 day event as a hackathon of real-world challenges. University and Industry teams welcome.
You can sign up as a competition judge or technical support.
Visit the robots
Visit centre:mk to see the robots in action, expert presentations, free schools visits and reading from Beverly Clarke. Join the evening events as part of MK Tech Week held at the competition venue.
Location
Middleton Hall, Centre:mk
177 Silbury Blvd
Milton Keynes
MK9 3ES
FAQs
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The sponsorship packages are listed in this brochure. The brochure also contains examples of the media impact from the competition. The competition is the flagship event in MK Tech Week and will bring technology partners, customers, public bodies, policy makers and open to the public.
https://tinyurl.com/robotcomp2025
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We have limited resources and options and will be reviewing our capacity to provide financial support.
Please contact Duncan Russell for information about support packages available duncan.russell@smccl.co.uk.
