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Georgetown-July 2nd, 2022 –Tryouts for the Guyana Robotics national team were in full swing at the Cliff Anderson Sports where Guyana’s youth engineers meet every Saturday to strengthen their robot building and programming skills, while learning more about the engineering design process which underpins the conceptualization and creation of the robot which they will be required to build to compete in the First Global Robotics Challenge scheduled this year for Geneva, Switzerland.
More than 40 Guyanese students responded to the call for tryouts for the esteemed team which will represent Guyana in 2022. Guyana joins more than 180 countries world wide which have participated in the First Global robotics competition since 2017. Successive Teams Guyana have competed admirably over the years and the Guyanese youth team expects to compete admirably this year.
Guyana’s 2022 cohort for the first time reflects an exceptional list of girls who are trying out for the team. “We are delighted at the participation of girls this year”, stated STEMGuyana Director Karen Abrams. “Many of the young ladies have emerged from our STEM clubs, camps, or other STEM programs which we have sponsored over the years, so we’re actually reaping the dividends of the capacity we continue to build.” Abrams also invited Guyana’s corporate community to step forward and support the team’s participation in the 2022 challenge. “Guyana’s 21st Century economy desperately needs more STEM talent and any investments made by the corporate community today will pay significant dividends for the business community and for the country in the future”, Abrams said.
The final team of 5 players, 2 adult mentors and a team manager will represent Guyana in Geneva, Switzerland in October 2022. Until then, a larger cohort of members will use the engineering design process to research, design, build and test the country’s entry into the competition.
The theme for 2022 is Carbon Capture. In the Carbon Capture game, shifting global alliances of six national teams work together with their respective robots to capture and store carbon (represented by small balls), demonstrating the collective effort required to protect our shared atmosphere. They then divide into regional alliances to focus on local efforts for long-term storage of CO2 to slow the effects of climate change. The game requires robots to be able to move quickly across the floor, to intake and store ball units and to shoot those balls into a round receptacle 98 inches high and nearly 48 inches diameter.
Click here to view 2022 game challenge.