On June 28, 2023, the socio-political newspaper "Vechernyaya Kazan" published a note about the participation of Tatarstan teams in the final of the Robotics Competition. Evgeni Magid, Head of the Laboratory of Intelligent Robotics Systems (LIRS) and professor of the Intelligent Robotics Department at the Institute of Information Technologies and Intelligent Systems (ITIS) of Kazan Federal University (KFU), commented the ongoing tournament in an interview for the newspaper.

“This is one of the top annual technical events,” Prof. Magid told, “because the competition procedure is an adapted version of the International Robotics Competition.”

He also mentioned other competitions developing the industry: “First of all, the WRO (World Robot Olympiad) and RoboCup competitions. RoboCup is an adult competition because there are leagues not only for kids, but also an open-age league, which we’ve recently won.”

The LIRS team has won the first place at the Robocup-at-Home competition in April this year.

Prof. Magid emphasized the importance of following international standards for robotics competitions, despite certain restrictions in the form of sanctions, and adaption to suit the current realities of the country.

“It makes no sense to redesign it completely, because we risk falling behind. Of course, there is a chance that we will overtake the rest of the world, but we still have one country with specialists, while specialists from other countries are involved in setting international regulations. Therefore, we should keep an eye on happening abroad,” he added.