SYDNEY, March 10 (Xinhua) -- A team of robotics engineers from the University of New South Wales will compete in the inaugural Mohamed Bin Zayed International Robotics Competition for the prize of 5 million U.S. dollars, it was announced on Friday.
Held from March 16-18 off the coast of Abu Dhabi, the competition will take place at the Yas Marina Circuit where the Formula 1 Grand Prix is held.
"When I was a kid I loved pulling things apart and making gadgets and it just went on from there, I studied engineering and got a PhD in electronics," University of New South Wales School of Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering, lead researcher, Mark Whitty told Xinhua.
"It's about a year of work, we have an amazing team of professionals that volunteer a lot of hours."
"We have a lot of experience competing in these kind of robotics competitions, so we feel pretty confident, but mainly it's just great to represent Australia and the University of New South Wales."
The competition will focus on how robotics can be used for disaster responses and present teams with a series of challenging tasks.
"Our robot drones are going to be put to the test, identifying objects from the air, landing on moving vehicles to pick up those objects, then delivering them to a target site," project leader Stanley Lam said.
The hexacopter drones used for this event have been named by the University of New South Wales team - Flippy, Floppy, Flappy and Fally.
"There's also a ground vehicle component, where the UGV has to drive to a panel in a location, identify and pick up a certain size spanner, grip it, and use it to turn a valve stem - all of this without human intervention - to demonstrate dexterity and mobility of an autonomous mobile platform," Lam said.
