WRO Regionals at Nysmith

This Saturday, 59 teams made up of 158 students, along with their coaches, parents, and around 500 attendees will descend upon the Nysmith School for the Gifted in Herndon for a full day of competition and fun in the World Robot Olympiad (WRO) regional championship.

Founded in 2004, the World Robot Olympiad is truly a global competition–bringing together the top robotics teams from all over the world to share their creativity, design, and problem-solving skills through programming and robotics. WRO tournaments are organized in more than 65 countries all over the world including the United States. WRO-USA organizes competitions at the regional, state, and national levels with the top teams from the national level earning an invitation to the annual World Championships. This year, that competition will take place in Hungary in November.

Within the WRO competition, students ages 6-25, are divided by age group into four different categories: Regular, Open, Football, and Advanced Robotics Challenge (ARC). A team consisting of 2-3 students, guided by a coach, will need to design, build and program a robot model that is capable of performing a specific challenge, play soccer, or demonstrate a solution for a real-life problem. This year’s challenge is SMART Cities. Games in the Regular and Open categories will be themed around new concepts, ideas, and technologies that will be needed to help build the cities of the future.

Robotics for Youth is sponsoring this year’s VA/MD/DC regional competition at Nysmith School. Last year, Nysmith alumni, Neha Bhat (class of ’16) and team mate Nithya Chintalapati, made it all the way to the world finals in Thailand. Their team, Absolute Zero, was the only team from the region to attend the world finals and the only all-girls team representing the U.S. They said, “Our team is very special because we are the only all-girls team representing Team USA for the Senior regular category. We are an inspiration to a lot of young girls around us. They see us as role models. By participating in WRO World Finals at Thailand, we wanted to boost the confidence in girls who are looking up to us. And we want to be that inspiration to them.” The girls have gone on to found STEMPoweringGirls with the objective of introducing girls of all ages to the world of robotics and programming.

Admission to Saturday’s WRO regional competition is free. Aside from the team competitions, there will also be hands-on STEM activities and demonstrations. Learn more about how to participate in future WRO events and discover more avenues into robotics and programming. You can register online for the event at: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/world-robot-olympiad-tickets-56721680072

 

For more information, visit http://wro.roboticsforyouth.org/.