This year the World Robot Olympiad will be devoted to Sustainabots: Robots for Sustainability. The judging panel is waiting for robotic projects helping humans to achieve the following goals: renewable and clean energy; sustainable cities and ecosystems; fighting against climate changes; improved life on land.
The WRO categories i.e. Regular, (including three age groups) Advanced Robotics Challenge, WRO Football and Open have remained unchanged. Meanwhile, the general rules of the Olympiad were updated and expanded.
“A permission to use any programming language in the High School category was among the most important innovations of this year. Besides, instead of WRO Bowling in Advanced Robotics Challenge it was introduced a new competition called Tetrastack based on Tetris® where a mobile robot uses a manipulator to interact with participants and elements located on the field in order to fill the Stacking Form with interlocking colored shapes called tetracubes”, said Alexander Kolotov, a member of the WRO judging panel and Lead Specialist of STEM Programs at Innopolis University.
The task of the young WRO participants is to develop robots offering a harmless way to study the nature. The robots will help to return rare animals to their natural habitat, eliminate greenhouse gases from cities and build wind turbine generators.
“So far, it has been published only a Russian translation of the WRO rules which will serve as a basis for the rules of the Russian Robotic Olympiad”, commented Alexander Kolotov. After the regional stage of the competition, young robotic enthusiasts will come to Innopolis University to participate in the Russian selections scheduled for the second half of June. There we will identify the best ones who will take part in the federal-level training camps where the Russian national robotic team will be formed. In November, members of our national team will take part in the World Robot Olympiad 2017 in Costa Rica. Russian participants have always been among the leaders of robotics competitions. In 2016, our national team won two gold, one silver and one bronze medal at WRO. Apparently, we have all chances to become champions at the competitions in Costa Rica.
All the rules are available on the web site of the Russian Robot Olympiad http://robolymp.ru/news/opublikovany-pravila-wro-2017/
In 2016, the main theme of the World Robot Olympiad was Rap the Scrap. The finals were held in New Delhi, the capital of India. Innopolis University have made a film about 47 Russian participants competing for medals and discovering India during three days of the Olympiad.
