A team of student researchers from the National Robotarium, supported by Heriot-Watt University and the University of Edinburgh, have reached the next round of the Amazon Alexa Prize SimBot Challenge, a global AI competition that tasks university teams with developing a bot that can best respond to people’s commands and demands.

Alexa Prize SimBot Challenge, a global AI competition that tasks university teams with developing a bot that can best respond to people’s commands and demands.

Team EMMA (Embodied MultiModal Agent), led by PhD students Amit, Hementhage, Malvina, and Georgios, successfully completed the Public Benchmark Challenge in April. The challenge involved talking a robot model through a series of household tasks using predefined dialogue datasets – created and provided by Amazon – to assess its ability to follow instructions, learn, and predict changes in its 3D virtual environment.
EMMA, the only non-US team to be shortlisted for the competition, placed sixth on the leader board, allowing them to continue into the ‘live interactions’ development phase, beginning in July 2022. During this phase, the teams will compete to develop a bot that best responds to real Alexa customers who will rate, review and feedback in real-time.

The outcome of the development phase will be revealed during the finals, scheduled for early 2023.