here is a quote from the abstract they submitted for the competition: “In a wide variety of settings, awareness of a robot’s presence can negatively impact its effectiveness or the validity of the data it collects. Robots deployed for inspection, environmental monitoring, or human–robot interaction may distract, disturb, or otherwise alter the behavior of nearby humans, animals, or other systems simply through their sensed presence. These effects can bias observations, reduce task performance, and limit deployment in sensitive environments. Minimizing the influence of a robot on its surroundings enables closer ob- servation of natural behavior, more reliable interaction, and broader applicability of robotic systems in real-world settings.”