Robot Assistant Lexi took first place at the Imagine Cup

Imagine Cup ( vk , fb ) is the world's largest annual technology competition held with the support of Microsoft since 2003. The permanent organizer of the competition is Microsoft. The winners of the international final in each category receive 50 thousand dollars for the first place, 10 thousand dollars for the second, and 5 thousand dollars for the third for the development. However, the battle is not for money, but for prestige - the winning teams instantly become known around the world, and can use this chance for a real takeoff. vk.com/rtrg?r=MyfvmSagVGcKoVRPBQ92U5CfxIhCPah9BpgCNi*VQ5Z*GZClBfq8O6Xqoc4FgyLmY/t2xfXW*b/pLNakil70J2BgItRALRcbqLdyvvbQaL48Y3InrmCX91lp3jlslzoTrQWAQ2odZccwu06QSKcDISHi4yplYcjlvQQqCvYweCs-&pixel_id=1000020818

As written on the site, graduate students and students from around the world can participate in the competition, as a team or alone. Participants need to come up with a bright idea and implement its prototype with the help of modern information technologies.



The Lexi project team, which consists of graduates from Moscow State University and Baumanka and Skoltech graduate students, also took part in the competition and took first place in the Innovations nomination. The Lexy project is a member of the information technology cluster of the Skolkovo Foundation. The project manager is a postgraduate student of the Space Robotics Laboratory at the Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology (Skoltech) Dmitry Suvorov. Work on the creation of the robot began last year. For the first time, Lexy was presented to the general public at the conference “Artificial Intelligence and Natural Language” in Skolkovo. Lexy is not just a robot, but an “intelligent assistant” with whom the user will be able to speak in ordinary language like a friend.
')


Albert Efimov:

Lexy is a member of the Skolkovo Robotic Center. “First, I want to note that this is the first victory of the Skolkovo participant in such a prestigious international competition, albeit at the national stage. Secondly, this team is not just from Skolkovo - the guys are also Skoltech graduate students, which confirms our idea of ​​technological convergence. Thirdly, the victory of Lexy in the, in my opinion, difficult track of the competition - “Innovations” - says that robotics penetrates everywhere, which was recognized by the authoritative jury of the Imagine Cup, ”Skolkovo robot center said Sk.ru

Stanislav Ashmanov about Lexi:



Lexy & Imagine Cup 2015:



This year, the Russian final of the Imagine Cup, which took place on April 18, 2015, became larger and larger. Many guys came from different regions of the country to fight for the title of the best and get the opportunity to go to the international final of the competition in Seattle, the headquarters of Microsoft.




Photos by Evgeny Kozlov . Eugene, thank you!

The event took place in Technopolis Moscow, where we arrived at 9 o'clock in the morning. We prepared an exhibition stand of our team: two working prototypes of Lexi and one more Lexi with new electronics, not yet launched.
The competition was opened by Dmitry Soshnikov ( vk , fb ).

Partial record of the entire event .

At 10:20 there was a presentation of the teams - a minute performance. In total, the competition has three nominations: social projects, games, and innovations. Plus the nomination "Master of the Code": for projects of students.

After the presentation of the teams, we went to our booth to tell everyone interested in the project. Several federal TV channels immediately asked for an interview (Layfnews, Mir, Ren-TV). Over the past few days we have become a bit more popular than they were.








Photos by Olga Avryasova . Olya, thank you!

Then there was lunch, fed delicious. After him - our performance, the first in our section. We performed, showed Lexi in action. Time was short, barely in time.

The jury was Alexey Pajitnov, the creator of Tetris. We were very interested to talk with him. They even took pictures.



We also talked with the designer of Yandex. Browser - Konstantin Gorsky .

We made friends with the creators of the prosthetic arm - Galvani Bionix.

Finally, there was an announcement of winners. As already mentioned, we won first place in our section. Now you need to make a video in English, telling about the project. We will fight with two more winners for a trip to Seattle for the final of the Imagine Cup competition.

Immediately after being awarded in the final of the Imagine Cup, Dmitry Suvorov shared his emotions with Sk.ru:

Everything is great, we won a big competition and now we can go to the international final, which is very interesting for us, because we want to bring Lexy to the world market and enter America. Presentation of the project at such a competition is a great opportunity to start. Of course, we hope to meet good investors. In the meantime, we will work on English.

By the way, the organizers of the Russian tour of the Imagine Cup noted that a high level of proficiency in English belongs to the strengths of the student teams this year. Dmitry Soshnikov, Coordinator of Academic Programs at Microsoft Strategic Technologies Department in Russia:

The day before the final, we communicated with the projects, listened to their performances in English, to avoid the situation in which we once found ourselves - that a team goes to the international final, who knows little English, which prevents it from showing itself. But this time it turned out that there is no such problem - all the teams are fairly well prepared, and of the three winners, no one should have problems with presenting themselves to the international community.

Sk.ru:

This year, the jury of Imagine Cup, which included representatives of the Russian Venture Company (RVC), the Skolkovo Foundation, the Agency for Strategic Initiatives (ASI) and the Foundation for the Development of Internet Initiatives (IIDF) and Microsoft, looked at 135 student projects from seven cities in Russia. 21 projects selected for the final. The winners were three teams.

In addition to Lexy, who took the first place in the category “Innovations”, two more projects will compete for the chance to go to the international final.

In the nomination “Social projects, the team Galvani Bionix (MIPT) won with the project Myoarm Control System. Myoarm Control System is a universal platform for contactless control of devices, based on the registration of surface electromyographic signals of human muscles. The system may be, first of all, useful for people with disabilities with no upper limbs.

In the “Games” nomination, the first place was taken by the IzHard team (St. Petersburg State University) with the project OVIVO - this is a platform game, the hero of which travels through the black and white abstract world. The main feature of the project is the change of physical laws, for example, gravity and minimalism of visual design. In the game, for example, there is no perspective. This is done so that the player can create individual images using his imagination.

Three teams winning the Moscow tour will take part in the international online semi-final. It will identify the best projects whose authors will be invited to the world finals at Microsoft headquarters in Seattle.

According to a Microsoft representative, the organizers and jury members of the Russian Imagine Cup are satisfied with the results of the competition. “We managed to select very strong projects, as a result of which, as I saw, the jury found it very difficult to choose the winners. We had to consult for a very long time, after an extra pitch, to go and see the projects at the exhibition in order to sort out the details and award the most worthy teams who can properly represent Russia at the international final. In general, winning the international final is an unpredictable thing that depends on many factors. But we, of course, will root for ours, ”said Dmitry Soshnikov.

It is difficult to win the international final, but the Russians have already succeeded. So, the first place in the Imagine Cup 2014 in the category "Games" was taken by the Periny development team - Brainy Studio with the TurnOn project. Prior to this, the victory in the competition was given to the Russians already 10 years ago - in 2005.

Part of the material for the post we took from the reporting material Skolkovo



And here is the complete list of all winners of the competition:

Social projects:
1) Galvani bionix
2) Neocortex
3) Iris Check

Innovations:
1) Lexy
2) Lazybit
3) C4L

Games:
1) IzHard
2) WhisperArts
3) FantasticFour

More information about our project can be found on the social networking pages:

vk.com/lexybot
facebook.com/lexyRobot

Read our great post: Igor Ashmanov about the future of home robots. Home robots: on the eve of a tornado

There is, of course, the direction of artificial intelligence, which is to understand how the human brain works, and repeat it in metal and electrons. This is, in fact, a marginal direction, and from my point of view, a dead end. There is no time to explain in detail, I’ll just say that this is my personal opinion.

Thus, AI is a scattering of tasks for imitating various functions of a person. The task of creating a computer that is aware of itself is not among them, at least among the developers, and not charlatans.

Thank you very much to the organizers of the competition!
Team lexi