Thirty students from seven schools across Qatar are set to participate in this year’s World Robot Olympiad (WRO), which takes place in Sochi, Russia, from November 21-23.

Students travelling to the 11th WRO, who will make up Qatar’s 11 competing teams, were those who triumphed in last month’s Qatar National Robot Olympiad (NRO).

Local schools heading to this year’s WRO in Sochi include AbuBakr Asdeeq, Khalid bin Ahmed, Philippine School Doha, American School of Doha, Dukhan English School, Tariq bin Ziyad and Mohamed bin Abdul Wahab.

This year’s WRO theme is “Robots and Space,” which will be reflected within the competition’s categories. Teams from Qatar will compete in the Regular category, a challenge in which teams build robots designed to solve a given challenge set on a table; Open category, in which teams use their creativity and problem-solving skills to construct smart robotic solutions that complement the competition’s theme; and the recently introduced GEN II Football category.

More than 800 students attended the Qatar NRO at Aspire Zone in October, which was the culmination of the year-long Go Robot programme, an initiative to encourage students to study science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM). Qatar will host the 12th WRO in 2015.

Dr Ken MacLeod, president of College of the North Atlantic–Qatar (CNA-Q), said: “Participants at this year’s Qatar NRO set a new standard in terms of technical expertise and creativity, skills which the travelling students will now take onto the global stage at the WRO in Sochi.

“As we head into 2015, and look towards Qatar hosting the 12th WRO, the Go Robot programme will continue with its training of students and teachers across the country.”

Sheikh Faisal bin Fahad al-Thani, deputy managing director of Maersk Oil Qatar, said: “We are proud to have helped send all these talented local students to Sochi, to represent Qatar on an international stage. Qatar continues to be an exciting country for anyone interested in science, technology, engineering and mathematics.”

The school robotics programme, Go Robot, has been running since 2012 as a partnership betweem CNA-Q and Maersk Oil Qatar, supported by the Supreme Education Council and Qatar
Petroleum.