Greek teams excelled during this year’s World Robot Olympiad, recently held in Smyrna, Turkiye, with a team from Kalamata, Greece, securing an impressive silver medal, the tenth in total for the country since it began participating in the global competition.
The World Robot Olympiad is one of the most important international competitions in the world, as it highlights the importance of technology and science in creating a more functional world, through the inventive eyes of young people.
The Greek team bitLab from Kalamata finished second globally and first in Europe in the RoboSports category, using specially designed robots playing robotic tennis.
“Winning the second place in the world, the young people of Greece prove for one more time how dynamic and creative they are. Congratulations to the Greek mission for its excellence,” said Panagiotis Gavrielides, Chief Marketing Officer of OTE Group, which sponsors the students.
Greek teams shine at the World Robot Olympiad
Several other Greek teams won honors in the Robot Olympiad. BotanIQ from the Attica region, ranked sixth globally and first in Europe competing in the FutureInnovators category. They presented a system that analyzes the soil and suggests which plants can be planted, thus enhancing biodiversity.
The Robovision team from Piraeus competed in the elementary school RoboMission category, securing the 15th place worldwide and the third in Europe.
Team Earphones from Thessaloniki competed in the high-school Robomission category and ranked 25th globally and fourth in Europe with a robot that helps rebuild cities after a natural disaster.
Finally, teams REM-Robot ExMachina from Thessaly and YellowSquad 2.0 from Larisa, impressed with their inventions on how to protect cities from natural disasters and how to viably transform them.
Greek teams competed among a record 560 teams from 87 countries. This year’s theme was “Earth Allies,” aiming to help the teams that participated in the contest to investigate how robots can help humans live in harmony with nature.
Every year, WRO Hellas, a non-profit and the main entity conducting robotics competitions in Greece and South East Europe along with STEM Education, organize the qualifying rounds for the World Robot Olympiad. Both organizations aim at introducing students, teachers and parents to educational robotics and more broadly to the STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) philosophy. In the last ten years, their efforts are supported by COSMOTE, the largest mobile operator in Greece.
What is the World Robot Olympiad
The World Robot Olympiad was founded in 2004 with a mission to “bring together young people allover the world to develop their creativity, design and problem-solving skills through challenging and educational robot competitions and activities.”
The annual World Robot Olympiad is hosted each year by a different country. The first WRO was hosted in Singapore in 2004 and 12 countries participated. Today the competition has expanded to over 85 countries, making the Olympiad a truly global event, where students aged 8-19 years compete in four different robotics categories.