Abu Dhabi: Mohammad Fawaz, 12, hopes that his participation on Sunday in the Robot Explorers 2015 competition will place him one step closer towards his dream of becoming an astronaut.
The two-day competition, which opened on Sunday in the capital, hosted students aged nine to 20 who have to programme, build and test robots that perform different tasks in a given period of time.
The winners of the second day will be qualified to attend the 12th international World Robot Olympiad 2015 in Qatar.
“We are doing what others are on a bigger scale,” said eighth grader Mohammad as he placed the final touches on his brick-collecting electronic creation.
“The robot is capable of sensing the colour of the brick on top on the one right below it on the pile. This helps it in preparing for its next step. It is also programmed to understand coordinates,” he said.
Mohammad hopes to modify his robot some day so that it can collect rocks from the surface of other planets.
Speaking on the sidelines of the competition, 14 year-old Saif Nasser said that learning how to build a robot has inspired him to become an engineer. In fact, the ambitious ninth grader was holding a fight robot equipped with colour sensors and wheels to keep it inside the ring, which he had put together in just 10 minutes.
“I think that these competitions help us in our ambition and self-development,” he added.
Working with the Abu Dhabi Education Council (Adec) in training children on programming and robot-building skills, a Creative Robotics UAE spokesperson told Gulf News that children learn faster than adults.
“The students we work with love and want this — you can see it when they touch a robot for the first time. It is something that they quickly become intuitively expert at. Additionally, once the wires have all been done, a chance to be creative in making the device’s body arises,” said Isaac Rice, Project Lead at Creative Robotics UAE.
Reiterating Rice’s comments, a computer programming teacher at one of the participating schools in Al Ain also said that his pupil’s creations go towards his own personal achievements in a way, making him very proud of his team.
