The best 18 teams will move on to the WRO, which will be held from November 25-27 in India.
The battle for the World Robot Olympiad (WRO) began on Sunday in Abu Dhabi, under the supervision of the Abu Dhabi Education Council (Adec).
This year, 1,500 students, grouped in 375 teams, from public and private schools across the country are participating in the UAE National Robotics Challenge. The best 18 teams will move on to the WRO, which will be held from November 25-27 in India.
"Despite announcing registration for the WRO UAE National Robotics Competition as little as a month ago, we received more than 1,000 student submissions from both public and private schools, which is a great sign," said Dr Najla Alraway Al Naqbi, e-Learning manager at Adec's P-12.
The competition began on Sunday morning with the regular category. All participating teams had to create a robot able of performing a specific task in a certain amount of time. The top three teams from each age group - elementary school, junior high and senior high schools - that got their robot to complete the challenge in the fastest time won.
Every year, the hosting country of WRO chooses the theme of the Olympian and for 2016, India has chosen Rap the Scrap - Robots For Reducing, Managing and Recycling Waste. In order to prepare the students for the WRO, the national challenge too picked recycling as the theme for the competition, and the challenge became increasingly difficult with each age group.
"In the senior high school, for example, we have this board with Lego pieces representing recycling material, containers and trash cans, all colour-coordinated. The robot has to pick the recycling material or the rubbish from the container and move it to the right trash can," Dr. Naqbi told Khaleej Times.
The competition continues with the open category, where students are free to create a robot of their choice. Just as in the regular category, they participate in the same age groups.
Adec believes that robotics is an innovative way of getting students engaged in science, technology, engineering and maths. "What impressed me most were the students themselves, not their machines," Dr Ali Al Nuaimi, director-general of Adec, told Khaleej Times.
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