MORE than 100 teams from 88 schools across Bahrain took part in an annual robotics challenge, for a chance to take part in an international competition in Thailand next month.
The two-day eighth World Robot Olympiad (WRO) was held at the AMA International School – Bahrain (AMAISB) yesterday.
The event featured team meetings, practice sessions and the actual competition with the teams being judged on their robot building and programming skills.
“One of the objectives of the competition was to raise awareness about how robots can help our environment and society,” WRO National Organiser Mary Grace Santos told the GDN on the sidelines of the event.
She said this year’s theme focused on the agriculture sector and how robots can be used to help the sector grow and develop.
“What the students will learn from this is how to build, invent and create a robot that will help the food industry and anything that has to do with food.”
“The mission of our robot is to save food. For example, if there is a fruit that is not ripe the robot transports it to its former position,” said Ibn Khuldoon National School 12-year-old sixth grader Abdulmuniem Eshada.
“To complete our mission we used a number of different technologies – colour sensing, line following, motors all.”
That robot took six months to build and programme in order to be completely functional.
Also part of the competition were presentations about how robots can be used in the agriculture field with displays showing fruit-picking robots and robots that can organise crops.
“We programmed our robot to be able to take the plants, or fruits, pick them and put them in storage,” said AMAISB 15-year-old grade 10 student Faris Al Dhaen. “It roams around and detects cubes representing crops. It then picks up the tray and goes to plant them.”
Ms Santos said she hoped more teams in Bahrain took part in next year’s competition for a chance to feature at the finals in Hungary.
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