eam LegoGoa recently excelled at the annual World Robotics Olympiad, National level Championship held in Delhi. More than 84 teams participated in the elementary category at the National level and Team LegoGoa CodeRex performed very well.
The World Robot Olympiad (WRO) is a global robotics competition for young people. The World Robot Olympiad competition uses Lego Mindstorms kit. This event for science, technology and education brings together the young people all over the world to develop their creativity and problem solving skills through challenging and educational robotics competitions. First held in 2004 in Singapore, it now attracts more than 26,000 teams from more than 65 countries. This year the WRO theme is ‘Smart Cities’ and it focuses on the current technology, developing new devices, and strengthening wireless technologies.
The Indian edition of WRO was hosted across 12 regional city events with the grand National level organised at the Kunskapsskolan School, Gurgaon, Haryana.
Team LegoGoa CodeRex that stood fourth at regional level at Bhopal qualified for the National level consisted of three students, namely, 10-year-old Sai Pranav Gandhi of class IV, 9-year-old Venkatesh Dempo of Class IV and 8-year-old Vedant Abhyankar of Class IV.
The second team LegoGoa Roborex that stood sixth at the regional level consisted of the following students, namely, 9-year-old Ananya Naik of Class III, 11-year old Swayam Kakodkar of Class V and 9-year-old Shounak Hede, of Class IV.
Lego robotics is the biggest robotics platform for kids in the world and kids participating in these events learn immensely about STEM (Science, Engineering, Technology and Mathematics) in a playful manner.
In the absence of a proper training environment in the State, unlike metros, the students’ parents have come together and taken the mantle of training the children themselves to prepare them for these highly competitive events.
So essentially, unlike their competitors, Team LegoGoa is a home trained team, which is mentored by their parents who have no prior academic training in robotics.
“This is run by passion and that is why we do not charge fees for mentoring the teams. It’s a great learning tool and the students have leapfrogged immensely with this exposure. Hence we have made it our mission to reach out to maximum kids in Goa and now parents of other kids are involved in the process,” said a parent.
“Robotics is a wonderful platform for learning 21st century skills. Solving robotic challenges encourages innovation and develops creativity and problem solving skills in students. Because robotics crosses multiple curricular subjects, students must learn and apply their knowledge of science, technology, engineering, math, and computer programming,” added one of the students.
“The most rewarding part of designing robots is that students have fun. They work together as a team, discovering their own solutions. Students thrive in this supportive and immersive environment, and learning occurs as naturally as breathing air,” added another parent.
When asked to comment about the growing response they have received across the State, the group adds, “Robotics has been there and older kids have been doing robotics, but it is a recent trend that younger kids are interested in robotics and there are International competitions and platforms for them to showcase their talents. For younger kids, it’s better because once they are little older, the pressure on them to study the vast curriculum is huge leaving them little free time to pursue robotics.”
As a message to other parents whose children have similar interest, they point out that the age group of 9-13 is the ideal age to start.
Incidentally, this latest achievement has been one of many as they have competed for robotics glory in various competitions and have come out with flying colours, qualifying for the national levels.
For instance, the Panjim-based Team LegoGoa had presented a project on growing food for space titled ‘Andromeadow, Growing Microgreens in space’, at the ‘FIRST’ Lego League (FLL), Robotics (Western Zone) Championship 2019 held in Mumbai. The FLL is designed as a sport for the mind and is an alliance between ‘FIRST’ (For Inspiration & Recognition of Science & Technology) and the Lego group. Every year, FLL releases a challenge, which is based on a real-world scientific topic and that year’s challenge was on the theme “Into Orbit”.
Experiments were done by Team LegoGoa on growing Amaranthus (tambdi bhaji) and mustard, which would take care of the nutritional deficiencies in astronauts as well as provide them with fresh vegetables. The project book was also presented to the Director of Agriculture.
The rookie Goan team, which also was the smallest team, won the ‘Most Inspirational Team’ (Team Work- Core Values) Award that year. For that competition, they had been mentored by their friend Eric Fernandes, an Electronics and Instrumentation Engineering student at the Government Polytechnic College.
Moving forward, Team LegoGoa is presently preparing two teams for the forthcoming international 2019 MakeX Robotics Competition, where the regional round will be held in Bangalore in November, followed by the national round in Mumbai and the international finale in China.
“We have been looking for long to have a robotics expert as a coach for the kids but have failed in finding one despite our willingness to pay. With an addition of a coach we could easily scale up and have more teams participating,” the team concludes.
