KAUST robotics team wins honors at European Robotics League event

Researchers from the KAUST Robotics, Intelligent Systems, and Control lab (pictured here) recently won awards at the European Robotics League Emergency Robots Challenge in Sevilla, Spain. Image courtesy of Jeff Shamma.

A team of researchers from the KAUST Robotics, Intelligent Systems, and Control (RISC) lab won both the "Best Air Team" special award and the European Global Navigation Satellite Systems Agency special prize during the recent European Robotics League (ERL) Emergency Robots Challenge in Sevilla, Spain. From February 18 to 23, the KAUST RISC team competed with several international university robotics teams from Croatia, France and Poland to complete a set of diverse aerial robotic challenges.

The ERL annually hosts various competitions throughout Europe that feature robots executing tasks in realistic environments. The ERL is composed of multiple "Local Tournaments" and a selection of "Major Tournaments," with teams taking part in at least two tournaments per year.

A 'tremendous effort'

During the Sevilla competition, the response capabilities of competing robots were measured in emergency situations through a set of challenges. The overarching goal of the ERL Sevilla event was to encourage advanced developments in the autonomous capabilities and seamless outdoor/indoor navigation for air and land robots.

The winning KAUST team was spearheaded by Kuat Telegenov, a research scientist from the RISC team who is supervised by Professor Jeff Shamma, director of the Center of Excellence for NEOM Research at KAUST.

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