Khalifa University competition tests the ability of robots to create solutions to real-world problems
Thirty-two teams from universities around the world brought their best drones and robots to compete at the Mohamed bin Zayed International Robotics Challenge in Abu Dhabi this week.
The competitors demonstrated their ability to tackle real-world challenges, such as taking another drone out of the sky, building a wall or putting out a fire in a high-rise.
Khalifa University of Science and Technology, organisers of the MBZIRC 2020, whittled down the field from 134 applicants to those elite 32, granting $3 million (Dh11 million) to the competitors to hone their projects and come to the Emirates to compete for a $2m prize.
The overall winner of the event was a joint team from the Czech Technical University in Prague, the University of Pennsylvania and New York University.
The organisers “focused on challenges that are important to humanity in terms of saving lives”, said Arif Al Hammadi, executive vice president of Khalifa University.
“These scientists coming to Abu Dhabi ... are trying to compete to solve these challenges and I would say in the next two to five years you will find the same products that they are making ... next door at Umex and becoming solutions.”
The three-day MBZIRC 2020 is hosted alongside the Unmanned Systems Exhibition, one of the biggest defence technology exhibitions in the region.
“Our aim was to see what the state of the art in robotics is and push the boundaries a bit more,” Lakmal Seneviratne, an associate vice president for research and director of the Khalifa University Centre for Autonomous Robotic Systems, told The National.
Midway through the first day of the competition, no team had successfully completed a challenge. By the end of day three, for every successful fire put out, drone downed or wall built, there were dozens of incomplete or aborted missions.
Mr Seneviratne said that was somewhat by design.
“This is the reality of robotics,” he said. “You see YouTube or read stories and you think robots are magic,” but developing the technology is extremely challenging, and the students are still honing their competence with artificial intelligence.
The Fly Eagle Team from the Beijing Institute of Technology was successful in the first challenge, taking another drone out of the sky with its autonomous flyers.
“It’s hard, very hard – much harder than the first competition,” Tao Song, the team leader, told The National, referring to the first MBZIRC, held in 2018.
“This competition is a big event because we not only participated but we learnt from other teams. Someone is really good at computer vision, another is good at control systems. I’d like to thank the organisers for allowing this exchange to happen.”
For Yusra Alkendi, a member of Team Al Nokhba UAE and a doctoral candidate at Khalifa University, it is not dealing with the robots themselves that is the challenge.
“Dealing with robots isn’t hard,” she said. But taking them out of a lab environment is where it gets challenging, because troubleshooting the root of hardware or software problems accurately and quickly is tough with so many variables.
But Ms Alkendi is optimistic that robots and drones will serve humanity in taking up tasks in harsh environments.
After all, “we can program them to help,” Ms Alkendi said.
Applications from 134 teams were whittled down to 32 who came to the Emirates to compete for $2 million