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Abu Dhabi students vie for slot in robot olympiad

Abu Dhabi - 1,000 students from across public and private sector schools have gathered in the capital to get selected for the Robot Olympiad.

A two-day pre-selection contest to pick teams of students to take part in the upcoming World Robot Olympiad (WRO) began in Abu Dhabi on Sunday.
As many as 1,000 students from across public and private sector schools have gathered in the capital to get selected for the Robot Olympiad, which will be held in Doha, Qatar, in November, under the theme Robot Explorers.
On Sunday, 300 student teams participated in the qualifying round, which will continue today at the Abu Dhabi National Exhibition Centre.
The two-day competition is being organised by the Abu Dhabi Education Council (Adec) to choose the best teams from different age groups such as under 13, 16 and 20 in the regular category and best five across all age groups in the open category and finally best four teams in football category.
"The national competition results will determine which 18 team members will be representing the UAE at the Doha competition," said Dr Najla Al Naqbi, Adec's e-Learning programme manager.
"Our aim is to encourage students to think critically, apply knowledge, reach solutions, work as a team under pressure, and experiment in a very short time span," she also mentioned. For each of the WRO category, there is a different set of judging criteria. The regular category will be judged based on how fast the team finishes its robot.
The open category considers quality, originality, innovation, creativity and team work in making a robot, while the Football category will be judged on how fast the two robot players manage to travel from one end of the "field" to the other and how many goals they manage to score.
"The competition is challenging, yet fun and creative, and I wish all our candidates the best of luck," Dr Al Naqbi added.
So far, only students from the Abu Dhabi emirate had participated Adec has been officially assigned to organise the national WRO qualifying competition since 2008, yet only students from the Abu Dhabi emirate have taking part. In 2011, Adec hosted for the first time the 8th International WRO in Abu Dhabi, which attracted over 600 teams. Two years later, in 2013, the UAE students won first prize in both the regular and open categories.
reporters@khaleejtimes.com