Staff Reporter
THE Carnegie Mellon University in Qatar (CMUQ) has announced the first-ever international Botball Robotics Challenge to be held outside the US. The tournament is scheduled for May 21 at the Qatar Academy gym at Qatar Foundation’s Education City from 10am to 2pm.
The event, featuring teams from local secondary schools, is being held to conclude CMUQ’s first robotics club programme.
Botball (www.botball.org) is a unique approach to robotics curriculum that emphasises learning through practical application.
The programme was developed in 1993 in the US by KISS Institute for Practical Robotics (KIPR).
The American School of Doha, the Omar Bin Al-Khattab Educational Complex for boys (also known as the Scientific School), Qatar Academy and the International School of Choueifat have clubs expected to compete in the challenge.
The contest will be judged by a panel of faculty from CMUQ’s main campus in Pittsburgh, US.
The judges include Matthew Mason (professor of computer science and robotics and director of the Robotics Institute) and Illah Nourbakhsh (associate professor of robotics, the Robotics Institute). Professor Nourbakhsh is currently at the Ames Research Center in NASA serving as robotics group leader.
Botball in Qatar is the brainchild of CMUQ dean Dr Charles Thorpe, who started robotics clubs in some secondary schools in October 2004 with the help of his son Leland.
“We’re delighted to be offering this educational opportunity in Doha to secondary school students,” Dr Thorpe said.
The robotics expert stated Carnegie Mellon is committed to reaching out to the community, and the robotics clubs are a wonderful way to encourage young students to learn more about science.
“Better still, the programmes’ popularity allows us to host the Botball Robotics Challenge, which is particularly appealing for Doha with the current focus on sports,” he observed.
Leland, a Botball enthusiast and former participant in Botball tournaments in the US, leads the weekly after-school club meetings. “As a former participant, it’s a real honour to launch a new chapter in a new part of the world” Leland said.
Selman Mawad, a computer science teacher from the International School of Choueifat, said there has been more interest in programming classes since the robotics workshops started.
The clubs have created quite a buzz among high school and middle school students, according to Dr Thorpe.
“We have received an enthusiastic response from the students and I am excited to see how quickly they have embraced the discipline, patience and concept of teamwork that is required of them to program robots,” he remarked.
Using Lego kits provided by CMUQ to create the robots, students write the programmes in C language, one of the most popular computer languages.
Outfitted with standard Lego materials, these kits also include technical pieces like touch and light sensors, as well as two microcontrollers.
These microcontrollers, the Xport Botball Controller (XBC) and the Handyboard, provide the brains of the robot and students download programmes to it that they write on an ordinary desktop PC.
The XBC is new to this year’s Botball Challenge, and features a modified Game Boy Advance as well as a sophisticated colour vision system.
Participants compete against each other on a 4’x8’ playing field in a fast paced, non-destructive tournament.
Once the game starts, students step back and the robots must start, stop and play the game by themselves without being guided by remote control.
Leland has been setting challenges every week for the students, as a build-up to the final challenge on Saturday. Previous challenges have seen students designing line-following robots; robots that run freely over tables without falling off the edge as well as robots that can sumo wrestle each other.
“It’s a wonderful opportunity to have the world’s best faculty teaching our students,” said International School of Choueifat’s deputy director Chris Connellan.
“We are particularly proud of Leland’s leadership in this project as he is the first former Botball student to initiate and implement a new Botball region himself,” said KIPR executive director and co-founder Cathryne Stein.
“It reflects well on his personal experience in the programme as well as his enterprise, vision and integrity in going to great efforts to give something valuable back to his local community,” the official added.
Lobna Genena a team member from The International School of Choueifat said she was looking forward to the final challenge.
“It will be fun to compete against other schools. I’ve learned a lot about programming through the workshops,” she said. |
