Nearly 200 new employees will join the Sber Robotics Center team following the results of a joint corporate master’s program with ITMO, Sber’s press service reported. The joint master’s program in Robotics and Artificial Intelligence has been implemented by Sberbank and ITMO since 2019.
It is assumed that the new team will conduct advanced research and development at the international frontier of embodied intelligence (application of artificial intelligence technologies in physical agents) with the potential to create a new high-tech market for service robots in the country.
“We have managed to establish a mutually beneficial partnership and we look forward to its deepening, taking into account new and ambitious tasks for the development of robotics at Sberbank. The task is not only to protect, but to increase the training experience of the next generation of qualified specialists in ITMO, who will strengthen the team of our center in the short term and in the future.” Sberbank Robotics Center.
For him, this means the development of an internship program as well as the implementation of joint research projects involving undergraduates, graduate students and leading ITMO staff.
It is noted that the research aims to create a universal “brain” and an intelligent body for the robot by implementing a software stack that can work with various mobile platforms and manipulators.
At the same time, developments will be made at the intersection of robotics and artificial intelligence, including modern methods for the design of robotic systems, sensor technologies and computer vision, algorithms and control systems, and machine learning. In many of these areas, ITMO has built some of the best teams in the country, based on the Biomechatronics and Energy Efficient Robotics Laboratory.
“To implement the project, it is planned to attract up to 200 new employees to the Sber Robotics Center, including graduates of ITMO and Sber corporate master’s programs, who receive in-demand competencies and intensive hands-on training while still studying. The report states that the selection of promising candidates will also be carried out among current applicants and future students of “Robotics and Artificial Intelligence” judgeship.
As part of its partnership strategy with ITMO, Sber plans to develop the created collaborative robotics training system based on research-motivated project-based learning.