Students and faculty at the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg did the province proud recently when two of their machines came first in the Hurocup robotics competition in Kuala Lumpur.
Wearing pint-sized T-Shirts which had been produced by a Winnipeg Print company, the humanoids, dubbed ‘SnoBots’, took part in a variety of events in the octathlon-styled competition. They were required to free throw a basketball, run a sprint and a marathon, complete a lift and carry, and play baseball. Following this, the machines were asked to navigate an obstacle course, kick a soccer ball, and make it up a climbing wall.
The challenges were each designed to test the robots’ abilities to plan, replicate a wide range of human motions and other complex actions, and also to observe human/robot interaction.
The Canadian pair came in first in both the wall climb and the weightlifting events. They placed second in the united soccer challenge, where they were grouped with other competitors on a team. They took fourth spot in the sprint and fifth in the soccer free kicks.
Students Chris Inverach and Josh Jung traveled to the competition to operate their creations accompanied by two faculty members from the university’s Autonomous Agents Lab.
The design and development of the robots was a team effort, and several other students contributed their time, ideas, and hard work.
After being awarded the FIRA Hurocup, the automated pair took some time to perform a victory dance, which has since been posted online to share their achievement and also to encourage others to pursue a career in robotics.
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