Robotics competition: 35 teams go head-to-head

Thirty-five teams from universities, research institutes, and companies from home and abroad participated in the 2019 Underwater Robotics Competition held this week in Dalian, Liaoning province.

The championship, organized by the National Natural Science Foundation of China and Dalian municipal government, is expected to bring together experts, scholars and research teams in the field of artificial intelligence and underwater robots, so as to promote scientific research, verification of results, and continuous progress in the field of AI.

According to Li Jianjun, deputy head of the Directorate Information Sciences of the NSFC, the foundation has kept increasing its support in recent years on research in underwater robot field, especially for environment perception and target grasping.

The competition is said to be the first worldwide intelligent robot competition in the real offshore environment.

During the past four days, the contestants took part in four types of events, namely offline target recognition, online target recognition, man-machine cooperative capture, and autonomous capture.

All competitions were held in real open seawaters. The teams overcame the influence of complex seabed environment and undercurrent, wind and waves, and the difference of experimental environment and real environment.

It had some technological innovation in the aspects of target autonomous recognition, robot stable control and efficient operator.

Teams from Peking University, Shenyang University, Dalian University of Technology, Dalian Maritime University and several others have achieved excellent results.

Guo Dongming, president of DUT, said the university takes marine information technology as a key breakthrough direction of information discipline and conducts collaborative innovation around key technologies of intelligent marine equipment such as underwater robot, and promotes the transfer and transformation of scientific and technological achievements.

The Artificial Intelligence and Underwater Robotics Summit Forum and China Multimedia Technology Conference were also held in Dalian during the competition.

More than 600 scholars and experts in the field of artificial intelligence and underwater robots, including three academician of Chinese Academy of Engineering, and over 60 top experts attended the forum and conference.

The competition and forum is expected to be an important platform and new driving force and engine for the city's urban transformation and revitalization, said Zhang Zhihong, deputy mayor of Dalian.

Dalian will increase the scale and investment of this competition, promote the gathering of major projects and high-end talents, and strive to be built into a leading demonstration city in the field of artificial intelligence and underwater robot, said Zhang.