Six students along with a mentor from Loselling Middle Secondary School and two technical advisors from FabLab Bhutan will represent the country in a robotics competition, “First Global Challenge 2019”, to be held in Dubai this month.
The team leaves tomorrow for Dubai. This year more than 2000 students from 193 countries will take part in the event.
A team of six teenage boys and girls (Sonam Choki, Tenzin Euden and Sherab Dorji who are all 16 years old, and Thinley Dorji, Arjun Mongar and Sherab Yangzom who are all 15 years old), class ten students from Loselling MSS will represent Bhutan at the robotics competition with their robot, the Thunder-Bot. The theme is “Ocean Opportunities” and the challenge for the participants is to build robots to clean up oceans. It focuses on ocean pollution that negatively impacts marine life and global populations.
“Our Robot should be able to pick up the balls of different sizes which represent pollutants in the ocean, and efficiently deposit in different recycling system. Based on that we will be getting points. We will be playing not alone and we will be aligned with other teams,” said Thinley Namgyel, a teacher of Loselling MSS in Thimphu.
“I am excited and passionate about getting my hands on building the robot. Representing Bhutan is a great honour. Youth all over the world get inspired and they will know about the importance of technology as the world ventures into science and technology. It is very important for us to know about how important the technology is and how we can make sure that we could have a better world to live in using the technologies and innovations,” added Sherab Yangzom, a student participant from Loselling MSS in Thimphu.
The team are the champion of the National STEM Olympiad 2019 which was held in Monggar. The first global challenge is dubbed to be the Olympics of robotics. The platform is an opportunity for children to grow and engage in technology. Each year the event addresses one major challenge facing the planet and encourages young participants to solve the problem through teamwork and innovative thinking.
Bhutan started participating in the first global challenge from last year which was held in Mexico City.
Choni Dema
