The task of participants of the Intelligent Robotic Systems section was to fit up a mobile robot with sensors and program its control system to enable autonomous indoors navigation.

Olympiad of the National Technology Initiative, a Russian team-based competition on computer engineering for students of 7—11 forms has officially finished in Sochi. The competition consisted of 12 sections, including Intelligent Robotic Systems organised by Innopolis University.

The background story is as follows: employees of the Centre for Logistics left the robotic loader somewhere inside the building at the end of their shift. The robot control system contains the building layout but has no information about location of the loader on the territory. The task of the robot is to get to certain sectors of the Centre, undergo service maintenance and come to the parking place.

One of specific features of the robotic track is that it has no guide paths and visual reference points. Thus, students had to think over some navigation options based on estimation of distance to obstacles and length of the travelled path.

Over 1000 people of the Olympiad applied for participation in the track but only 21 student reached the final stage. Maxim Kureykin and Vyacheslav Romanov from Kirov and Aidar Garikhanov, a student of Innopolis Lyceum became winners while Ilya Makarenko, a student of the 10^th form from Zheleznogorsk won a prize in the category.

“It was hard to do the tasks using a real robot instead of a simulator due to problems with sensors and motors. Even simple tasks took more time than expected thus cutting the time necessary for the final challenge. Meanwhile, I have managed to beat even the strongest competitors from Kirov who showed the best team results”, — commented Aidar Garikhanov.

“Students of Innopolis Lyceum took a half of top places at the Olympiad. In particular, they became winners and received prizes in the following categories: Electronic Engineering: Smart Home, Neuroethologies, Unmanned Aerial Systems, Wireless Communication Technologies, Telecommunications and Earth Remote Probing (Space Systems)”, — told Alexey Khabibullin, the Head of Project-Oriented Academic Competitions Office of Innopolis University.

Based on the competition results, the jury decided on 15 best teams and 17 winners from Moscow, Kazan, Novosibirsk, Ufa, Kursk, Yoshkar-Ola, Kaliningrad, Krasnoyarsk, Rostov-on-Don and Tyumen.