Last Tuesday afternoon, the library of the Liceo Tomás Berreta was full. Students from various high schools and technical schools of the department were waiting for the Regional Robotics Championship to begin, adjusting details so that their robots could move on a cardboard track, pick up some plastic balls and take them to a safe place.
The tournament served as a previous instance to the National Championship Sumo.uy, organized by the Faculty of Engineering. TODAY CANELONES was in the Regional and spoke with teachers, students and organizers.
Preparations
The members of the Robotics Workshop group from the Tomás Berreta High School moved from the computer to the track. Concentrated, they made different changes so that their robot would be the most effective and would better face the obstacles. "We are preparing for the engineering competition," said Atiliano Negrín, a sixth-grader at Tomás Berreta High School. He added that the workshop began last year, but only this year he was able to get his own materials.
Negrín has participated since the workshop began. He said that the idea came up between teachers and students. "We have been practicing, and more and more people are joining in. We do it, more than anything, by will. It is not compulsory," he explained. As for the complexity of robotics, the student said that difficulties arise at the beginning, but with experience everything becomes easier: "It's like any language: you have to get used to it. You also have to know what to say to the robot so that it has a certain reaction", he explained.
Santiago Moreira is a math teacher at the Juanicó High School. His students tell him that he is also a robotics teacher, since he is one of those who run the workshop at the high school in the village. The workshop started this year and his assistants are only first year students. However, they are already familiar with the robots, they handle them with the ease with which a toy is used and all agree that they really like programming.
Ahead of the National
Gonzalo Tejera is a professor at the Computer Science Institute of the Faculty of Engineering. He went to watch the Regional since it is the only one this year. However, the National Championship does have a good participation of high school students. Of the three educational levels that participate in Sumo.uy (school, high school and university) is the most crowded. "The regionals allow many people who think robotics is complicated to approach it and lose their fear of it. Last year, many students read the slogan and were scared because it was very long. Then they realized that the challenge was very similar to what they had always done," Tejera explained.
Professor Tejera added that the Sumo.uy championships are open and that many people outside the educational system also participate. "There is a general public that has robotics as a hobby and builds its equipment from scratch," he said.
We share some images captured by our camera during the course of the Robotics Regional.
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