STEM Guyana yesterday hosted its robot competition at the Marriott Hotel.
Karen Abrams, a Guyanese-born innovator based in the United States, expressed her enthusiasm for this year’s convention, where she introduced STEM as an integrated discipline in Guyana. She highlighted the goal of fostering teamwork among youth, encouraging them to build robots and collaborate effectively.
With 25 existing STEM clubs in Guyana, Abrams aims to see that number soar to 100 by December, reflecting her dedication to expanding STEM opportunities for the country’s youth.
Stabroek News spoke to a few of the participants at this year’s convention who provided insights into their inventions.
Sharmala Singh from the Lake Mainstay learning pod shared a bit on her team’s invention. “Because we are from Mainstay Lake, which is known well for pineapples, we are building a robot here today that will help the farmers of Mainstay to clean the place up and clean the pineapples.”
The National Library STEM team eagerly shared their invention with this newspaper. The team explained their grass-cutting technology that aims to alleviate the tedious task farmers are faced with when it comes to land clearing.
Mahendra Drigpaul from team West Canje, explained his team’s dump truck invention in great detail. “Today, we have constructed a dump truck. The … bot plays a vital role in transportation it is functional for construction projects.”
Jayda Fox from the Kitty STEM club explained that her team placed an emphasis on sports. “This is a soccer football robot [and] it has a design to push the ball inside of an opponent’s goal.” She emphasised the effort she and her team put into the project. “It really took a long time to build and I hope we win something today.”
Onetta Brummell from the Region Two Aurora STEM club, based their bot with agriculture in mind. “We built a robot that distributes fertilizers and paddy along with water. This is a game changer which will help the farmers to save a lot of money as opposed to hiring labour; it is an all in one.”
Jeremiah Khan from STEM team, El Dorado Reprep, shared their invention and take on the combine harvester which was based on an old model form of the farming machine with an interesting new take “it will pick up and sift it out and deploy it too.”
