The Mohamed Bin Zayed International Robotics Challenge (MBZIRC) will be held in the UAE capital, Abu Dhabi, in June 2023, where tech innovators will participate to seek marine safety and security solutions to take home more than US$3 million in prize money.
Organised by ASPIRE, the dedicated technology programme management pillar of the Advanced Technology Research Council (ATRC), the overarching advanced technology research body in Abu Dhabi, UAE, the MBZIRC is held every two years. The upcoming edition, called MBZIRC Maritime Grand Challenge, focuses on real-time solutions to maritime safety and security challenges and seeks to claim its place among the largest and most prestigious AI and robotics competitions in the world.
The Challenge is open to international universities, research institutions, companies and individual innovators from all over the world. It will involve a heterogeneous collaboration among unmanned aerial vehicles and unmanned surface vehicles, to perform complex navigation and manipulation tasks in a GNSS-denied environment. Call for registrations is now open.
The challenge will show how both the entities focus on niche areas of technology, while attracting global innovators to stimulate ideas, encourage collaboration, and push boundaries in advanced technologies to find systems solutions to global challenges.
The challenge is for a swarm of UAVs to identify a target vessel from several similar vessels in open waters in a GNSS-denied environment, and to offload specific items from the target onto an USV in the shortest possible time using autonomous technologies. This is a new kind of kind of exercise in autonomous robotics.
In line with its efforts to build Abu Dhabi’s R&D ecosystem, ASPIRE will design several grand challenges and international competitions in advanced technology to solve some of the world’s most pressing issues. ASPIRE also works in consultation with cross-sector industry stakeholders, universities, and research institutes to frame problem statements.
Recently, ASPIRE has partnered with the XPRIZE Foundation to launch a global competition, titled ‘XPRIZE Feed the Next Billion’. The initiative is co-funded by Ghadan 21, Abu Dhabi’s accelerator programme that is driving the emirate’s development through investing in business, innovation, and people.
