The event was called Open Uruguay First LEGO League and it was the first Robotics World Cup to be organized in Latin America. It is estimated that this project works in more than 80 countries and involves more than 250,000 young people in the world. In Uruguay, 66 teams were formed.
The Robotics World Cup is not an event exclusively for children who love technology and want to be future programmers or systems engineers, but it is an international gathering of groups from various parts of the world who work in educational workshops on computational thinking.
Computational thinking suggests something similar to knowing how to program and work with computers, but it is not just that. The Director of the Ceibal Foundation Study Center, Cristóbal Cobo, told No toquen nada that it is "a set of knowledge and skills to solve problems. It uses analytical thinking, the ability to divide the problem into parts, abstract to apply it to others, look for previous solutions and develop new ways to solve problems, with or without technology".
Through Computational Thinking students learn science and technology but also develop creativity and research skills. In addition, Computational Thinking has a focus on soft skills such as teamwork, communication and oral skills, for example for the preparation and presentation of a research project.
These skills are also put into practice in First LEGO competitions, such as the Open Uruguay. In fact, in the Antel Arena's court area there were 66 stands where each team's scientific projects were explained, with all these skills at the service of dissemination.
The booths were highly decorated, with people dressed in costumes, playing music, dancing and serving food typical of their country. Rubber bracelets were piling up on the arms of the students, who began to add flags on different parts of their bodies, and by Saturday afternoon it was practically impossible to decipher which country each student was from.
There were children and adolescents from Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Bolivia, Colombia, Estonia, France, Germany, Greece, Israel, Italy, Korea, Mexico, Romania, Russia, South Africa, Turkey, USA and Uruguay, to name but a few.
Sofía González Plateiro, from the Uruguayan team Garra Charrúa, from Tala, said that "It was a great experience to get to know new countries and cultures. From some countries I could discover things I didn't know they had, games and people in general. Meeting people from your own country is also very good, besides seeing the projects they promote and how intelligent they can be".
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Each year the World Cup poses (at least two months before the event) a challenge divided into two areas: the robot game and the scientific project.
The robot game has to do with demonstrating the capabilities of the robot that is worked on during the year, the robot is a kind of sample of how much and how well the workshops were worked on in each country. That is the most sporty part, in which the teams must perform 15 missions with the robot in less than two and a half minutes.
The robot competition was what stole the attention of the giant screen of the Antel Arena and was what was on top of the stage, but meanwhile, all the teams that were not competing (because they were going up in batches) were having fun, playing, getting to know each other and exchanging gifts from their countries with the new friends they were making.
The scientific project always has a specific theme and this year's theme was "In Orbit". Thus, it was determined that the project should focus on both the physical and mental health of astronauts in space, after more than a year away from planet Earth.
The teams had to find a problem to solve in an innovative way or improve an existing one. They were also evaluated on whether their presentation was creative and whether their research had been carried out on the basis of a search for information from different sources, including interviews with experts in the field.
Each team could have a maximum of 10 youngsters between 9 and 16 years old, guided by a coach.
Franco Navone, from the Argentine UV team in Maza, explained the theme of this edition of the World Cup: "The project has to be related to some problem in space and the challenge of the robot and its missions are all problems that are currently outside the Earth".
A project of a Uruguayan team proposed the creation of a dance machine using harnesses, so that astronauts do not float, while exercising their lower body (which is always difficult to keep active) and thus generate positive effects on the mood of the crew members.
Another of the Uruguayan projects was related to astronaut psychology and proposed a robot psychologist, who would attend astronauts through artificial intelligence, using machine learning (which is the ability to learn from machines) so that they could get to know their human patients.
The student Cintia Mello explained the project of the Uruguayan team Gaucho Power: "We saw that the astronauts didn't have a place to spit the toothpaste after washing them, so they swallowed it. Besides, they used the same toothpaste we consume on Earth, which contains fluoride and damages the intestine in the long term. So we decided to look for a solution so that they could spit out the toothpaste or create one that they could eat and finally we made a new product.
Evaluation and awards
The teams were evaluated on three aspects: Project, Robot Design and Values (in which they were not evaluated with scores but levels of approval). As for values, aspects of working together as a team and with society were evaluated. They worked on the values of cordial professionalism, coopertition (a word typical of this type of event that means cooperation and competition), discovery, innovation, impact (how the world changes with what we learn and propose), inclusion and fun.
Although the jury offers different positions, in total more than 30 prizes are distributed: there are general, specific for the robot design, project, values, teamwork, professionalism and several other concepts.
In the overall standings, two Brazilian teams won first and second place and third place went to MIG Botics, the Uruguayan team from Miguez that represented Uruguay in Houston last year.
Lautaro Gonzalez, from the MIG Botics team, said that "it is a great emotion to win at a world level, and even more so being from our town, which has less than 3,000 inhabitants. We come from a high school of less than 250 people, I'm very happy, it's a terrible emotion.
When these kids traveled to the United States, they arrived to find their robot destroyed, which made it difficult for them to participate and although they fixed it and competed, it didn't go very well.
Now, in addition to a third prize in the overall, they took a prize for a competition with robots. Lautaro Ferraro explained how he felt about the contrast between the broken robot and the robot that led them to win a prize.
"To have won a prize at home, in Uruguay, is a tremendous source of pride. To know that our work is rewarded is a great joy, because in Houston we had broken the whole robot and now we won because of the robot. It is a tremendous pride".
Source: 180
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