News

The UT Austin Villa Robotics Team recently won third place at the RoboCup@Home 2017 competition, in the category of Domestic Standard Platform League. The competition was held in Nagoya, Japan. Robocup was originally founded by Japanese researchers to develop robots that could play soccer well enough to eventually defeat world champion players. The idea was playfully implemented in order to fuse robot engineering with artificial intelligence and development. Now the original goal of the competition has expanded to include other areas and goals of robotics.

In January 2016, WNCG welcomed two new faculty to its ranks - the husband and wife dynamic duo of research, Profs. Andrea and Edison Thomaz. “It is an incredibly exciting time to be at UT Austin,” Prof. Edison Thomaz states. “And WNCG exemplifies the type of forward-thinking that makes UT stand out. Having graduated from UT myself many ages ago, I could not pass up the opportunity to come back, contribute and be part of this transformation.”

Ken Pesyna, doctoral student at the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at The University of Texas at Austin’s Cockrell School of Engineering was selected as a 2015 Marconi Society Paul Baran Young Scholar. The award recognizes Pesyna’s academic achievements and leadership in the field of communications and information science. Pesyna was selected for his outstanding work in centimeter-accurate and power-efficient smartphone positioning, his excellent academic record and his demonstrated entrepreneurial capabilities.