6 Cebu students to compete in Robot Olympiad

CEBU, Philippines - While other kids their age are playing online games and are stuck on social networking sites, elementary and high school students of the Dr. Caridad Labe Education Centrex Inc. in Lapu-Lapu City are busy building and programming robots.

In fact, six of their students will be flying to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia in November to represent the Philippines in the World Robot Olympiad 2012 under the Regular Category.

The students namely, Nicole Debra Ignacio, Persis Faith Pame and Isaiah James Cervantes, all grade six students, won first place in the 11th Philippine Robotics Olympiad (PRO) held at SM Cyberzone in SM North Edsa Annex last Sept. 5 to 7.

PRO is an annual competition among students from all over the country where they meet to create and program robots, and is geared towards developing students’ critical thinking and creativity.

More than 400 public and private elementary and high school students took part in the competition, which had three categories namely, Robot Soccer, Regular Category and Open Category.

In the regular category, the students were asked to program a robot with Artificial Intelligence in order to perform tasks on a table with various obstacles.

For the winning group of CCL Centrex, they built a robot organizer which is able to identify colors, drop a ball according to the color it corresponds and pick up different materials as well. The team was headed by their coaches, Donald Dungog and Jonathan Cartilla.

Pame, the team leader of the group, said in an interview with The FREEMAN that they built five different programs before they came up with the final one that was their entry in the competition.

“We are very overwhelmed to have won the competition. We feel nervous though for the upcoming world competition because we will be competing with different schools from all over the world,” said the 6th grader who is a first-time competitor.

For Ignacio, who has joined the competition three times, they like the training they get from their school and from joining competitions because they learn in a higher and different level and still have fun.

Cervantes, for his part, shared that he would rather build and program robots than spend his time on computer games, which most kids his age are doing.

The group competed against 64 schools all over the country for the elementary division.

Another group from CCL Centrex bagged the 4th place of the same category and will be flying to Kuala Lumpur as well.

The group members are Michael Wallace Manlosa, John Kairos Abalos and Xerxes Paul Ignacio.

Marie Ernestine School from Cebu also bagged second place while third place went to De La Salle Zobel School. These schools will also be competing in the World Championship.

The two teams from Cebu are members of the Mactan Robotics Club, an organization of students, teachers and robotics enthusiasts in Mactan, Cebu.

Rachel Labe, president of CCL Centrex said that they are encouraging more robotics aficionados to join the club, especially young ones who would like to learn more about programming robots and having fun doing so.

For CCL Centrex, Labe said that they focus the Science Technology Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) program training to students from grade four to high school.

She said that through training and competitions like these, the students are able to broaden their knowledge and strengthen their capacity in programming skills as early as elementary. — /MBG (FREEMAN)