One month after approving a Discovery and Innovation Centre for its main campus, Heriot-Watt University has furthered its bid to become one of Scotland’s leading tech hubs after reaching the final of Amazon’s Alexa Prize competition.

Awarded to teams of researchers who could demonstrate the strongest contributions to conversational AI, the annual competition takes its name from Amazon’s patented home assistant, Alexa. According to Heriot-Watt, this year’s competition focused on the challenge of building a robot which could converse engagingly with humans on popular topics for 20 minutes – a tall order for a machine today.

Professor Oliver Lemon, Co-Leader of the team, said of the team’s placement: “Heriot-Watt is known as a world-leader in artificial intelligence and robotics, and we have helped cement this growing reputation by competing against some of the most celebrated universities in the world. As co-leader of the team, it has been an honour to work with such a talented group of students who I believe will now go on to have an even greater impact in the field of artificial intelligence.”

Heriot-Watt’s team, named What’s Up Bot, pipped more than 100 others – including entries from Harvard and Princeton – from 22 countries to finish the competition in third place. The nine-strong team was based out of the University’s Interaction Lab in the School of Mathematical and Computer Sciences, and was bested by entries from Czech Technical University and ultimate winners, the University of Washington.

Judging opened in April 2017, and over the course of the contest thousands of Alexa customers were selected to challenge the finalists’ socialbots on various pop culture topics. The customers then provided feedback on which bot they felt performed the best.

Heriot-Watt claim that on the final day of public testing their bot garnered the highest average rating among the socialbots, from the hundreds of conversations staged.

Professor Verena Rieser, Co-Lead of What’s Up Bot, asserted that the team had exceeded all expectations:  “We were the only UK University represented in the final of the Amazon Alexa Prize, which in itself is a tremendous achievement. I’m extremely proud of the students who have invested a great deal of time and effort. All have made significant sacrifices, with some even putting their studies on hold in order to take part. Hopefully, through our involvement in this competition, we will inspire the next generation of computer scientists.”

The news follows Heriot-Watt’s announcement in November 2017 that it has secured planning for a new Discovery and Innovation Centre. Costing £19 million, the new tech hub is geared towards ‘transformative for education and industry’, featuring two teaching blocks and other facilities to teach mathematics, engineering, physical sciences and computer science. Work on the new centre is expected to be complete by early 2019.