Amazon Selects Finalists to Compete at the Amazon Robotics Challenge Event in Japan This Summer

Amazon Selects Finalists to Compete at the Amazon Robotics Challenge Event in Japan This Summer

This year's finalists span industry, start-up and academic groups from Australia, Germany, India, Israel, Japan, the Netherlands, the Republic of Singapore, Spain, Taiwan and the United States

The Amazon Robotics Challenge will award up to $250,000 in prizes and encourages idea sharing and innovation within the robotics and automation community

SEATTLE--(BUSINESS WIRE)--May 10, 2017-- Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN) today announced the 16 finalists in its third-annual Amazon Robotics Challenge. The teams from Australia, Germany, India, Israel, Japan, the Netherlands, the Republic of Singapore, Spain, Taiwan and the United States will convene on July 27 in Nagoya, Japan, where they will demonstrate their latest robotics hardware and software that can pick and stow items in storage. The Challenge combines object recognition, pose recognition, grasp planning, compliant manipulation, motion planning, task planning, task execution, and error detection and recovery. The robots will be scored by how many items are successfully picked and stowed in a fixed amount of time. Winning teams will be awarded up to $250,000 in prizes.

This challenge is an opportunity to strengthen the ties between the industrial and academic robotic communities and promote shared and open solutions to the technical challenges we face in unstructured automation, said Joey Durham, Contest Chairperson and Manager of Research and Advanced Development for Amazon Robotics. It's also a celebration of robotic innovation - something we are deeply focused on at Amazon - and provides a platform for the academic and research community to share and promote their research in a fun and rewarding way.

The following teams have been selected as finalists and will be competing in the 2017 Amazon Robotics Challenge:

MC^2 - Mitsubishi, Chubu University, Chukyo University

NAIST-Panasonic - Nara Institute of Science and Technology, Panasonic

Team T2 - Tottori University, Toshiba

Team K - University of Tokyo

MIT-Princeton - Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Princeton University

Team Duke - Duke University

PLAID - Carnegie Mellon University

GMU-Negev - George Mason University, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev

ACRV - Queensland University of Technology

IITK-TCS - Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur, Tata Consultancy Services

TKU M-Bot - Tamkang University

Nanyang - Nanyang Technological University

NimbRo Picking - University of Bonn

UJI RobInLab - Jaume I University

Applied Robotics - Smart Robotics, University of Sydney

IFL PiRo - Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Helmut Schmidt University

This year's Amazon Robotics Challenge will be held during RoboCup, the leading and most diverse competition for intelligent robots and one of the worlds most important technology events in research and training. The 2016 contest was held at RoboCup in Leipzig, Germany, and was won by team Delft, a collaboration between Delft Robotics and TU Delft's Robotics Institute.

As a result of this contest, we are attracting more interest than ever before from robot manufacturers approaching us to pursue additional research, said Carlos Hernandez Corbato, Team Delft Captain and Postdoctoral Researcher. This challenge was the most exciting project I have ever done in research and the most gratifying because of how much we learned.

Amazon is committed to supporting innovation in robotics and automation. The company utilizes a wide range of innovative technology within its fulfillment centers, including more than 80,000 Amazon Robotics drive units in over 25 fulfillment centers worldwide. Amazon Robotics drive units deliver items directly to employees at ergonomic work stations and help make associates' roles more efficient.

For additional information about the Amazon Robotics Challenge including contest details, participating teams, rules, and FAQs, visit www.amazonrobotics.com/#/pickingchallenge. For more information about RoboCup, visit www.robocup2017.org.

About Amazon

Amazon is guided by four principles: customer obsession rather than competitor focus, passion for invention, commitment to operational excellence, and long-term thinking. Customer reviews, 1-Click shopping, personalized recommendations, Prime, Fulfillment by Amazon, AWS, Kindle Direct Publishing, Kindle, Fire tablets, Fire TV, Amazon Echo, and Alexa are some of the products and services pioneered by Amazon. For more information, visit www.amazon.com/about and follow @AmazonNews.

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