Mexican students succeed in RoboCup 2019 with robot “Justina”

Justina

, the working android of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) , won the second place in the international competition RoboCup 2019 .

This robot was developed in 2006 , in th e Biorobotics Lab of the Faculty of Engineering , headed by Dr. Jesús Savage, with undergraduate and graduate students.

“We have the level to compete for the first three spots, and it’s the result of the consistency and rigor of working even on weekends and holidays. The key is to call for new students who are taught by those with more experience , hence we don’t start from scratch and the project renews in the long term,” said Jesús Savage in a press release issued by the University.

Robotics, Mexico's new challenge

The robot of the Koblenz-Landau University in Germany won the first place . “In my opinion, Justina had a better performance than the winning robot; it could be noticed in the manipulation of objects and its movement , which confirms that we’re not that far from Asian or European teams , although the challenge is to refine the mental part,” said Hugo Enrique Estrada León , from the graduate course in Computer Science and Engineering .

According to the release of the UNAM , in the competence Justina had to open a cabinet with dishes, utensils, and fruits inside, find in which panel were the objects, and go to a table; the students trained her well, but her extremity got stuck in a tab of the repository, the robot started to pull and broke its arm. However, they could fix her and got a good score.

“The RoboCup is not the goal , but an example of what we do; it is not the final objective, the objective is to prepare students and to pursue research in this area, and in the long run to consolidate a robot for home service,” highlighted Savage.

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