All 16 teams fielded by Guyana at this year’s International Youth Robotics Competition (IYRC), which was held virtually, have medalled.
In a press release issued on Sunday, STEMGuyana announced that the teams, comprising four senior teams, with members ages 13 to 18 years, and 12 junior teams, with members ages seven to 12 years, each earned bronze in the competition against more than 1000 teams representing more than 20 countries.
“The goal this year was to ensure a regional diversity of teams,” STEMGuyana Director Karen Abrams, was quoted as saying in the release, which said the STEMGuyana organization was able to prepare teams seven regions.
It also noted that 10 of the 12 junior teams represented youth from the national Learning Pods programme which is largely funded by a grant from the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB).
The IDB as well as the Ministry of Culture, Youth and Sport was credited with supporting Guyana’s participation in the virtual competition.
The release said for the third year, teams were prepared for global competition by the STEMGuyana organisation, which has a working robotics lab at the Cliff Anderson Sports Hall sponsored by the Department of Youth and the Office of the Prime Minister.
Although past teams have earned gold and silver medals, the release explained that this year teams were given a little more than two weeks to prepare their robots because of the coordination of coaches, space and equipment needed to prepare 16 teams from seven regions for international competition. “Preparation requires team members to research, ideate, settle on a solution, create a draft, then build, test and update robots,” it said.
According to the release, the teams were also required to record presentations of their creations, which were judged by a panel of international judges. In this regard, the Learning Channel made a studio available for local teams to record their presentations while Coaches Stephanie Simon, Joshua Reece and Aisha Peters prepared the Region Four teams and STEMGuyana leads Dominic Budhan and Alisha Koulen coordinated the Learning pod teams.
The IYRC is an annual youth competition in robotics, programming, and digital technologies, organised by the International Youth Robot Association (IYRA). Previous competitions were held in Korea, Thailand, China, and Malaysia.
The release noted that teams from Mongolia, Russia, Thailand, Australia, Malaysia and Indonesia scored gold and teams from Columbia, Mexico, Algeria and India were among those that scored Silver.
