Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates- 11 November 2021: Abu Dhabi Department of Education and Knowledge (ADEK) congratulates the seven teams who completed four days of intensive online competitions representing the UAE in the final of the World Robot Olympiad 2021 (WRO) which was held 18-21 November.

 

This year, a line-up of over 200 national teams from 65 member countries took part in the international competition under the theme ‘Powerbots; the Future of Energy’. The Seven UAE teams, , selected following a national qualifying stage hosted by ADEK, were put through their paces across the competition's Open, Regular, and Future Engineers categories.

 

A trio of winning teams achieved Top Ten rankings in two categories, with Sec Open Elementary - 01 team achieving fifth place in the Elementary Open Category, team SEC-Eco Station took ninth place in the Junior Open Category, while, team Apollo won seventh place in the Future Engineers category. The teams were each tasked to create their own innovative intelligent robot models to solve real-world energy challenges which increased in complexity depending on the team’s age category. The finalists were required to present their projects to a panel of WRO judges who evaluated their robot model as well as their project methodology.

 

Klaithem Alneyadi, member of ADEK, the national organizer and head judge commented “We are delighted to congratulate our national teams for ranking in the top 10 of the competition is a remarkable achievement as the level of competition across the 200+ participating teams was incredibly strong. As we move towards an increasingly knowledge-based economy, developing STEAM skills including robotics, AI, and coding has never been more important. By enabling students across our education eco-system to participate in competitions such as WRO, we have an opportunity to showcase young talent and see give them the opportunity for a hands-on experience. Witnessing young innovators develop solutions to tackle the competition’s real-world issues is an inspiration to us all.”

 

Yasser Mohamed, coach of Junior Open Category winning team SEC-Eco Station thanked ADEK and Sharjah Private Education Authority (SPEA) for enabling the team to participate, “We are grateful to ADEK for openning up an opportunity for UAE students to compete on the global stage at one of the world’s biggest robotics and STEAM competitions, and we were thrilled with our ranking. Our team was diligent in their WRO preparation leading up to the finals, we focused our efforts on the quality of our project to compete at an international level as the benchmark was so high. Time management was the biggest challenge for our students, especially as they had to balance competition readiness against studying for exams. However, the hard work paid off and we couldn’t be more pleased with our performance.”

 

Meanwhile, Mostafa Mahmmed, coach of the winning team Sec Open Elementary – 01  in the Open Category Elementary, said “First and foremost, we are immensely proud that we had the opportunity to represent the UAE at WRO. We managed to rank fifth in our category which is a great achievement given the tough competition. Throughout the qualifiers and the finals, our team had an enriching learning experience and I would like to thank ADEK and SPEA for their unwavering support.”

 

Mohammed Mukhtar, coach of team Apollo in the Future Engineers category said: “The new Future Engineers category was new to this year’s competition and it was a very welcome addition. The students were challenged with developing a prototype concept resembling a self-driving TESLA. We spent long and late hours completely immersed and focused on the task, and it was a mind-blowing experience for all of us. We were honored to represent our great nation and reaching the international top 10 competition rankings. We can’t wait to participate again next year.”

 

Next year’s WRO International Competition will be held in Dortmund / Germany . Details of how to apply for the UAE national qualifier will be announced in 2022.