Eight teams from the UAE will compete at the World Robot Olympiad (WRO) finals in Germany this November after seeing off competition from more than 500 teams during four intense days of UAE National Qualifiers organised by Abu Dhabi Department of Education and Knowledge (ADEK).
For the 14th year in a row, ADEK led this year’s UAE qualifiers which ran from 4th-6th June online and on 25th June in person, featuring students aged 8 to 19, and were challenged to compete under the theme ‘My Robot, My Friend’ to showcase various ways how robots can interact with and help humans.
The annual competition aims to enhance students’ STEM skills, creativity, and problem solving, inspiring a future generation of scientists, engineers, and inventors from around the world.
The local qualifiers saw the participation of 512 teams including 402 teams from public and private schools, 34 teams from charter schools, and 76 teams from other institutions such as universities, centers and companies. In total, 1,800 students from across the Emirates were tasked with using artificial intelligence to design and develop robots that can work with humans toward a better future.
Eighty-three judges from across a variety of sectors were carefully tasked to evaluate and select the eight winning teams, each of which will now take part in the WRO finals and compete against teams from in over 85 countries across four categories: RoboMission, Future Innovators, Future Engineers and RoboSports.
ADEK invited all public, private, and charter schools, as well as universities, to take part in the UAE qualifiers online, which involved three categories – RoboMission, Future Innovators, and Future Engineers – competing across four separate AI-based themes that focused on healthcare assistance, emergency response, green transportation, and self-driving cars.
All participants were divided into three age groups: Ages eight to 12 for elementary, 11-15 for juniors, and 14-19 for seniors. UAE Future Coder took first place in the Future Innovators Elementary category, while The Pioneers from Unique World Robotics won the Junior level competition. Sharjah Youth Wasit claimed the Senior level accolade. In the RoboMission category, Storm Troopers won Elementary, RBH Junior from Rashed bin Humaid School won their category, and team Khorfakkan RoboMission from Secondary Technical School won at senior level. In the Future Engineers category, which is only open to seniors, Apollo from Unique World Robotics took first place.
The competitions of the fourth category – RoboSports – took place in person on 25th June at 42 Abu Dhabi and was based on a game of doubles tennis. The teams were tasked to build autonomous robots from LEGO materials. Emirati team Digital Robot won in first place and is now set to join the seven confirmed representatives at the world finals in Dortmund; Choppa Team came in second place and AAESS 1 in third.
Klaithem Alneyadi, member of ADEK, national organiser, and head judge, said, “Every year, we see the number of participating teams and the standard of submissions growing and this year has been no exception with 512 extremely impressive participating teams. We witnessed four days of innovative problem solving related to AI and robotics – two STEAM skills that are growing exponentially and will become increasingly more important in all our lives in the future. As we move towards an increasingly knowledge-based economy, enabling students across our education eco-system to participate in competitions such as WRO is of vital importance.
“The attention will soon turn to November, when our national representatives will travel to Europe to showcase the best of the UAE’s young innovators on the world stage. Seeing them develop solutions that showcased how robots can interact and help humanity was awe-inspiring and I expect to feel similar emotions when seeing them tackle renewable energy issues. I wish them all the best and fully believe they will do the country proud.”
Source: Emirates News Agency