From Aug. 15-18, 2018 some high students from around the globe representing more than 100 countries will be competing against their peers at the First Global Challenge. The theme of the Robotics Olympics is “Energy” and the Olympics will have these students engaged in various demonstrations and displays in robotic forms using the sciences.
Each team representing its own country will display different methods on how to conserve energy and how to help propel scientific concepts that are substantial and resourceful on the conservation of energy.
The International Robotic Challenge aims also to ignite more passion and interest for the Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) from the students and for these youths to explore scientific concepts which are attainable for development.
President of the Union of Jamaica Alumni Associations (UJAA) and Adjunct Professor at University College of Maryland, Lesleyann Samuel, herself an engineer, said “the challenge will encourage the young people to see these scientific concepts as being different from the norm and also realize that mathematics is not boring.”
The Robotic Olympics will take place at the Arena Ciudad de Mexico, Mexico City, Mexico. Organizers believe that the young people will see the challenge as a global problem that requires a global solution. It is also expected that the Olympics will open doors for scientific discoveries for the participants, UJAA’s president Ms. Samuel commented, “the students will need to make discoveries their parents and grandparents would consider miracles or impossibilities, or just plain science fictions.”
Samuels noted that added values to this exposure will be the difference in languages and cultures among the various students as they collaborate on how to cooperate and build bridges for science.
Interfacing with First Global Olympics for the Jamaican students who are participating is the Union of Jamaica Alumni Associations, the local group which is also sponsoring the Jamaican team, along with the support from the Jamaica’s Ministry of Education, Youth and Information.
Other Caribbean countries which are expected to participate are Bahamas, Trinidad and Tobago, Cuba, St. Kitts & Nevis, Dominica, Barbados, Grenada, Dominican Republic, Guyana, St. Lucia, Bermuda and Haiti.
