The winning team consisted of experts of FER's Laboratory for Robotics and Intelligent Control Systems (LARICS) and Laboratory for Underwater Systems and Technologies (LABUST).
The team, led by Kristijan Krčmar, competed against some 60 teams from prominent universities from around the world, including Lockheed Martin and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. It first made it into the five best teams, and was eventually declared the winner.
The Abu Dhabi competition, held biennially, is one of the most prestigious robotics competitions in the world, sponsored by the President of the United Arab Emirates and ruler of Abu Dhabi, Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed.
The goal of the competition was to make an entirely autonomous unmanned ship capable of taking over cargo from another ship in cooperation with drones.