The winners of the
FIRST Global Challenge robotics championship have returned from Singapore.
Students from the Nazarbayev Intellectual School of Physics and Mathematics in
Almaty achieved record-breaking results, outperforming competitors from 191
countries. Kazakhstan’s robotics team retained their championship title, which
they previously secured in Geneva last year. The team was coached by Bekzat
Inkarov.
“Last year, we
already won the Grand Prix of the competition. During that time, there was
uncertainty, but this year, we knew exactly what we were going to do while
assembling the robot. First of all, we carefully studied the rules to identify
actions that would bring us the most points. We had two weeks for preparation,
therefore, we trained more than the other participants. We corrected all the
minor mistakes, ensuring that nothing would go wrong as we stepped onto the
global stage,” said Bekzat Inkarov, head of Technotory Laboratory at NIS PhM
Almaty.
This year’s theme
for the annual global robotics competition centered on the use of hydrogen as a
fuel source. The school students’ task was to create robots capable of sorting
hydrogen and oxygen atoms on a simulated playing field.
“There were six
teams competing on the same field, and our objective was to collect as many
balls as possible. We managed to gather more than other teams. Our robot sorted
big balls from small ones, which saved us plenty of time. The same task was
given during the national stage. We added a special filtering function to our robot,
significantly enhancing our chances of success,” shared Dameli Shaimerdenova, NIS
PhM Almaty student.