Ahead of the third Global Robotics Olympics (GRO) set to hold in October 2019 in Dubai, United Arab Emirate (UAE), Nigeria has selected five students as its contingent to represent the country from some secondary schools nationwide.
This was made known on Monday, 2nd July 2019 in a statement by Mrs Remi Willoughby, Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Robobglobal Education Consulting and National Coordinator of GRO in Lagos.
She disclosed that the selected students emerged after a try-out session was carried out consisting of 200 students from 50 schools. The selected five are Isaac Ibidun, Toluwaniyin Ojo-Osagie, Gbemileke Ogunrayewa, Kosi Ugoji, and Sonia Bendrewere.
FIRST Global is a non-profit organization founded by Dean Kamen.
It promotes Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) education and careers for youths through Olympics-style robotics competitions called the FIRST Global Challenge.
The programme aims to develop youths, particularly Africans with critical thinking and problem-solving skills to enable them to find solutions to challenges in their countries as well as their continent.
Willoughby also disclosed that this year’s competition tagged “Ocean Opportunity” will help the contestants collectively proffer solutions to ocean pollution.
Each team will build a robot that would work with that of other teams to help preserve the wild-life.
Meanwhile, the Nigerian students would be taught the principles of robotics design using mathematics, physics, and engineering through Java.
