Prizewinning students set to compete in second Amazon Alexa Prize TaskBot Challenge

The team of University of Glasgow computing students which scooped a half-million-dollar prize from Amazon last year is gearing up to compete once more. The GRILL team, made up of students from the School of Computing Science, won first place in Amazon's $500,000 (£405,000) international Alexa Prize TaskBot Challenge for their work in developing GRILLBot, a next-generation conversational assistant. GRILLBot can assist users in multi-step tasks, such as baking a birthday cake or fixing a scratch on a car, while also adapting instructions to take into account users' varying levels of skill and access to different tools and resources. Now, the team is one of 10 from universities around the world who will compete to build an even more advanced TaskBot. The GRILL team are the only team from the UK competing for the prize. This year's challenge expands beyond DIY to include crafts, hobbies and more at-home activities. Participating teams will create new and innovative ways to incorporate image and video aids into every conversation turn when a screen is available.