H.IAAC students and professors working in the research lines of Cognitive Architectures and Learning in Cognitive Architectures formed a team to participate in the PhyRC Challenge – Physical Robotic Caregiving, an international competition in the area of ​​assistive robotics, organized by the EmPRISE laboratory at Cornell University.
The team formed bears the name of UNICAMP and achieved the remarkable feat of qualifying for the final phase of the competition. Among the five teams that qualified for the final phase, the UNICAMP/H.IAAC team was the only team from the Global South, after securing second place in the simulation phase of the so-called Challenge 1 – Fixed Base Manipulation for Dressing Assistance. A total of 56 teams from 17 countries participated, including some of the world's leading universities and robotics research centers.
This result not only highlights the group's excellence in this global scenario, but also reinforces the relevance of the research developed at the hub in the areas of artificial intelligence and assistive robotics, which are strategic areas for the future of automation in industry and healthcare.

The next challenge will be to transfer the results obtained in the simulation to a real robot, which will be tested in the in-person phase of the competition during the International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA) 2025, in Atlanta, USA – one of the largest and most important events in the area.