A University of Glasgow student, Andreea Lutec, has won second place in a prestigious software engineering competition.

Andreea's success came in the Young Software Engineer of the Year awards 2016. Her project involved developing real time robot camera controls.

Andreea is fascinated by robots and the increasing ways these are being used. She spotted a problem with the widely used Robotics Operating System (ROS) and decided to see if this could be solved. Whilst ideal at small scale, the ROS has reliability issues at scale and so industrial robots normally use customised technology platforms. Andreea investigated using the Erlang programming language, a world leading technology known for its reliability at scale, to address this. Her project compared real time face tracking using the two different systems ROS and Erlang, to prove that Erlang would successfully address the reliability and scalability issues in ROS. As runner-up, Andreea received a cheque for £2000 from sponsor BCS, and a trophy from ScotlandIS.

Andreea, grew up in Romania and studied for her undergraduate degree at the University of Glasgow. Last summer she worked at JP Morgan’s software development centre, and has spent this summer continuing her research at Glasgow University. She will shortly be starting a Masters in Robotics, Systems and Control at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich. Her work has also won her the BCS prize for best project evaluation.

First published: 10 October 2016

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