The Venezuelan team celebrating their victory in the FIRST Global Challenge robotics world championship, held in Singapore from October 7 to 10, 2023. Photo: Screenshot by Alba Ciudad.
A team of young people from Venezuela became champions in the FIRST Global Challenge robotics world championship, held in Singapore from October 7 to 10, 2023. After competing against 191 countries, the team—made up of Sofía Parra, Marcela Gómez, Gabriel Sánchez, Alek Caliman, Antonio Colina, and their mentors, Emanuel Andrade, Samuel Paz, María Victoria Uzcátegui, Paulo Ferray, Sebastián Guadagnini, Andrés Rincón, and Elio Urdaneta—won the gold medal “Albert Einstein Award for FIRST Global International Excellence,” the highest award given by the founder of FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology), Dean Kamen, the vice president of LAM Research and main sponsor of the competition.
Australia and Cambodia achieved second and third place in this competition, which finished this Tuesday, October 10. In addition, the Venezuelans obtained the silver medal Grand Challenge Award, for their performance in points in the world championship, and the Social Media Award, for their performance on and the support garnered by their social media platforms.
In the second video featured below, you can see the young Venezuelans and their Kashi robot participating in one of the qualifying competitions. In it, Venezuela teamed up with the Maldives and Guinea, and they defeated the trio formed by Iraq, Ghana, and Croatia. The aim was for the robot to collect green and blue balls (symbolizing hydrogen and oxygen atoms, respectively), separate them, and place the green ones in a certain basket within an established time limit.
¡Campeones mundiales en robótica! ¡Orgullo de Venezuela para el mundo! 🇻🇪
Felicitaciones a nuestros jóvenes que ganaron la medalla de oro "Albert Einstein" en el Campeonato Internacional First Global Challenge 2023, celebrado en Singapur. pic.twitter.com/U9VtfIyjNX
— Héctor Rodríguez C. (@HectoRodriguez) October 10, 2023
The FIRST Global Challenge is an Olympic-style international robotics competition, in which young people between the ages of 14 and 17 years old participate and which is held in a different country each year. On this occasion, Singapore hosted the competition, between the 7th and 10th of October.
“Teams work together to complete tasks in a game-themed contest based on one of the biggest challenges facing our planet (climate change),” states the website of FIRST, a non-profit charitable organization, “which includes the 14 Grand Challenges of Engineering, in an effort to foster understanding and cooperation among young people across the world, while using their skills to solve the world’s problems.”
The organization’s mission is to inspire leadership and innovation in young people of all nations, empowering them through science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education. The competition brought together “the next generation of STEM leaders from 191 countries, united in the pursuit of sustainable energy solutions and a better tomorrow.”
In advance of the competition, Team Venezuela presented, following months of work and dedication, “Kashi,” their robot capable of transmitting messages through the use of hydrogen as a source of clean and renewable energy, according to a post made on the team’s Instagram account. Their presentation took place in Zulia state, five days before being crowned champions in Singapore.
¡¡¡¡VIDEO BRUTAL!!!!
Este es #KASHI🤖, el robot que los seis chamos y chamas del #TeamVenezuela 🇻🇪 presentaron en el First Global Challenge de Singapur. De verdad se me saltaron las lágrimas.
Ya los viste celebrando su merecidísima victoria, ¿pero los viste en acción? pic.twitter.com/FWwUQRsQhK
— Luigino Bracci Roa 🔧🚂 (@lubrio) October 11, 2023
The robot Kashi—which, in the indigenous Wayuu language, means “the Moon”—was the sensation of the world championship, due to its great agility and speed in the tests carried out over the course of the four days that the event lasted, standing out from all the other robots in the competition.
The Venezuelan delegation that participated in the event is made up of students from the Salto Ángel schools in Zulia state, alongside members from the Altamira School, Mater Salvatoris School, Claret School, Santa Ana School, and the UEE Juan Antonio Román Valecillos schools. Their entry into the competition was sponsored by the local government of Zulia state. From the Instagram account of the Salto Ángel school, it was noted that the students “consistently won the national championship of the Ka’i Cup, the most important intercollegiate robotics competition in our country.”
As a result of their consistent national victories, they were chosen to represent Team Venezuela as the official national robotics team, “and we got the ticket to participate in the most important competition in the world,” their post added. “The dream did not end there.”
Translation: Orinoco Tribune
OT/JRE/AU
