A team from the National Robotarium, supported by Heriot-Watt University and the University of Edinburgh, has been selected to compete in Amazon’s new global AI competition, becoming the only non-US participant.
Amazon’s Alexa Prize SimBot Challenge asks teams to create help for a futuristic world that can understand natural language, interact with humans and accomplish tasks and missions.
During two phases, teams are required to design a machine-learning model with language-guided visual navigation before completing a task. This is followed by a live interaction phase during which teams will test the bots to respond to customer commands and multimodal sensor inputs from within a virtual world.
The National Robotarium team, named EMMA (Embodied Multimodal AI) will compete in both phases. The public benchmark challenge phase is also open to individuals from academia and industry.
EMMA has passed the initial selection process and will receive a grant of US$250,000 (£185,000) to support its development costs. Along with the research grant, the teams will receive Alexa-enabled devices, free Amazon Web Services cloud computing services to support research and development efforts, as well as other resources, and Alexa team support. The winning team will receive a US$500,000 (£370,000) prize.
Stewart Miller, CEO of the National Robotarium, said: “To be the only team from any country in the world outside the USA to be selected for the Alexa PrizeSimBot Challenge demonstrates the global significance and capabilities of the teams within the National Robotarium.
“Backed by the combined robotic and AI experience of Heriot-Watt and the University of Edinburgh, we’re demonstrating our ability to lead global development in AI, pushing the boundaries of what’s possible in a domestic setting.”
Furthermore, the team’s research has also led to a spin-out company named Alana which is currently working with the RNIB to build conversational systems for blind and partially sighted people.
