By Giwa SHILE
Some Nigerian students are set to represent the country at the 2108 World Robot Olympiad in Thailand after coming out tops at the World Robot Olympiad (WRO) Nigeria held in Lagos.
The WRO Nigeria was held at the Lagos City Hall, Lagos Island, where 35 schools and 140 students across Nigeria participated.
The winners of each category will represent Nigeria at WRO, Chiang Mai, Thailand later in November.
The students at this year’s competition tagged: “Food Matters’’ seek to proffer solutions to the way we grow, share and consume food with the aid of robots as a means of providing scientific supports.
The task was to create robots that will solve both simple and complex tasks of providing solutions to agricultural challenges, such as pest monitoring, watering and simple farm works.
The winners for the 2018 WRO Nigeria are Team Imperial Gate 1 which came first. The team has Amara Oguamnam, Adil Umeh and Ayomide Alaba.
Team Imperial Gate II came second with Jeremy Chiemezie, Oluwasindara Olatawura and Angel Odewoye.
Team Nijabot came third with Oluwataresimi Agbayangi, Theophilus Okolo and Zara Onwude in the team.
In the open category (Junior), Team Titanix came first, Team Eva Adelaja came second, while Team Bliss was third.
For the Senior Category, Lagos Model College, Meiran, came first, Ojota Senior Secondary School, Ojota followed, while New Era Girls College, Shitta was third.
The 2018 WRO Nigeria serves as the qualification stage to the WRO coming up in Chiang Mai, Thailand in November that may have about 22,000 participants according to the organisers.
The participants are drawn from across the public and private schools in Lagos having gone through tutorials from their teachers.
The 2018 WRO Nigeria was put together by Arc Lights Foundation Academy a programme which has been on since 2014.
Arc Light Foundation is the exclusive partners of LEGO in Nigeria and LEGO Education in West Africa, and is the organiser of the World Robots Olympiad, an annual event that draws participants from across the world.
The organisation seeks to set up a framework aimed at developing and improving the art of robotic science in Nigeria and Africa at large.
The programme was set with knowledge-based scientific trainings on robotic science and focus on refining, equipping and transforming schools, educators and parents.
The convener of the 2018 WRO Nigeria, Mrs Abisola Obasanya, said there had been a significant improvement in the knowledge of robotic science since its introduction to the school curriculum within four years.
“We are so excited about the progress of robotic science since its introduction to the curriculum in the last four years. It has been a remarkable improvement.
“The children have done well or to say, exceptionally well this time around with the focus on more points derived during the competition and this has shown that the knowledge is fast gaining ground.
“The children are getting more involved and now, we got a lot of children with excellent scores about 120 out of 125 premium; I am sure they can challenge their contemporaries,’’ she said
