09:21, July 16, 2026

A student camp kicked off on campus in cooperation with Yandex [photo report]

The Industrial Robotics Student Camp, a free two-week intensive course for students of Russian universities organized jointly with Yandex, started on July 13 at the new campus of Ural Federal University. This is the third educational camp that UrFU and the company are holding together.

From July 13 to 24, participants will work on the creation of autonomous robotic systems, combining modern technologies of artificial intelligence, computer vision and digital modeling.

Traditionally, Ilya Obabkov, UrFU Rector, opened the student camp. He gave a motivational lecture to the participants on engineering creativity, modern technologies and the opportunities that open up to young developers in the field of robotics.

"Here at the camp, you will test our hypothesis – education may be different. The onslaught of artificial intelligence gives you a chance to start studying in a different way, because education must change following shifts in the industry," Ilya Obabkov said.

This year, the camp brought together 89 students from 32 universities and 17 cities in Russia. Among the participants are representatives of MIPT, ITMO, NSU, MIREA, NCFU, VSU, TUSUR and other leading universities in the country.

The program is dedicated to full-cycle autonomous robotics based on the Sim2Real principle. Participants first train robots in the Unity virtual environment, and then transfer ready-made algorithms to real devices. In addition, students will get acquainted with modern VLA models (Vision-Language-Action), which allow robots to simultaneously analyze images and text commands, independently making decisions about further actions.

Especially for the camp, the staff of the UrFU Engineering School of Radio Electronics and Information Technology — RTF developed and assembled a new RT-800 robot.

Delfina Zakharova 

Ural Federal University is one of the leading universities in Russia founded in 1920. UrFU is located in Yekaterinburg, the capital of the Ural region, an economic, industrial, scientific and cultural center of Russia. The university is the project office of the Ural Interregional Research and Education Center "Advanced Industrial Technologies and Materials" designed for solving tasks of "Science" National Project.