(28 Nov 2016) FOR CLEAN VERSION SEE STORY NUMBER: 4068386
LEAD IN:
The world's biggest robotics competition is helping to inspire a new generation of students to get involved in working with robots.
More than 450 teams from 50 countries are competing at the World Robot Olympics (WRO) in New Delhi.
STORY-LINE:
Competitors line their robots up, ready to strike.
This is an engineering challenge for university students to build a robot capable of picking up a mini bowling ball and knocking down the pins.
The robots have to sense where the target is and hit it without any intervention from their creators.
This is just one of many arenas at the World Robot Olympiad at the India Expo Mart near New Delhi.
Now in its 13th year, the WRO brings together young people from all over the world to develop their creativity and problem solving skills through robotics competitions.
More than 450 teams from 50 countries are now competing as the competition gets bigger every year. Schools are invited to enter a team of three students to participate.
Each team needs to create, design and build a robot model that is capable of performing a challenge.
With robots likely to play a key role in the future, the idea is to encourage young people to become scientists, engineers and inventors.
"You need to be able to program. You need to be able to interact with objects… with robots," says Dominic Bruneau, an engineer and head coach for the Canadian teams.
"Robots will be more and more present in our lives. We have seen most of the time robots in plants, you know, doing difficult jobs. But more and more, we will be interacting with robots. Social robots. And this is something that these kids here will be working on. Interacting with robots. I mean, it's the perfect time for them to be learning because in five years from now, the world would have changed a lot. And we will have robots everywhere," he says.
Most of the participants are from high school or university, but some are as young as six years old.
In this task, participants are expected to train their robots to pick up and deposit blocks - all without any human involvement.
Nicky Du Plessis, a teacher and coach from South Africa, says building robots at a young age equips children with logical thinking and problem solving skills.
"We start with the fundamentals. We believe that if kids can start from a very young age, how to build. It gives them technology. It teaches them how to build. Then it teaches them logical thinking. How to change something quickly. So I think really robotics is the way to go."
World Robot Olympiad organizes robotics competitions in four different competition categories - the Regular Category, Advanced Robotics, Football and the Open Category.
The theme of this year's Open Category it is 'Rap the Scrap' and participants were asked to design robots that would help in reducing, managing, and recycling waste.
Finalists from around the world display their ideas and have to explain how their robot would work.
"WRO is an opportunity for them (kids) to learn, to see how others are doing, and to learn from each other. So its just not a competition. Its a process in which you are learning, you create a product, you create a robot. You get the same problems as you get in real life. And that's what it is all about, you know. You're not only doing theory, you're doing practical work of building real stuff and trying to solve problems," says Bruneau.
The World Robotics Olympiad was held on the outskirts of New Delhi from 25 - 27 November.
Find out more about AP Archive: [ Ссылка ]
Twitter: [ Ссылка ]
Facebook: [ Ссылка ]
Instagram: [ Ссылка ]
You can license this story through AP Archive: [ Ссылка ]
