Staff Reporter
OMAR Bin Khattab Scientific School has won the Second International Botball Robotics Challenge in Qatar, organised yesterday by Carnegie Mellon University in Qatar (CMUQ) at the City Center. Al Khor International School took the second place, with Amna Bint Wahhab Independent Secondary School for Girls coming third.
The event, which came as the grand finale of a seven-week robotics programme course, saw the winners garnering the highest overall score, compiled from the tournament rounds as well as the pre-completion documentation of their work.
Doha College, American School of Doha, and International School of Choueifat were the other participants who showcased their autonomous robots, created with the help of CMUQ.
Teams from each school designed, developed, programmed and documented their robots, and competed against each other on a playing field the size of a ping-pong table in a high energy, non-destructive environment.
Botball is a US-based organisation that introduces robotics to high schools. Student teams are equipped with a Lego Mindstorm robot, along with instruction on how to programme it to move autonomously through a course.
The judges were Botball production manager Elizabeth Whitewolf, research programmer (Robotics Institute, CMU Pittsburgh), CMUQ teaching assistant Justin Carlson, and the Challenge organiser Mohamed Mustafa.
"The winning team had a great robot, which was designed well and had great engineering behind it," said Whitewolf.
CMUQ Dean Chuck Thorpe pointed out that Botball is a great way to learn about robots. "Even better, it is an excellent way to get hands-on experience with math and engineering and teamwork," he added.
An intensive two-day robotics workshop was arranged by CMUQ seven weeks prior to the competition. The participating schools were given the necessary background and expertise to build and programme robots during the exercise.
The following seven weeks saw the students working on their own to build and programme robots, guided by their teachers.
"The teams showed magnificent designs and creativity in preparing their robots," Mustafa said. |
