Ghana’s representatives are geared up for the 2022 edition of the Robofest World Championship that is set to come off on the 13th of May.
They include teams from Right to Dream Academy, Prempeh College and Our Lady of Grace Senior High School in Mampongteng.
The 2021 reigning national champions from Our Lady of Grace SHS will be looking to make a mark in their first Robofest Online World Championship
In the competition, these Ghanaian representatives would compete virtually against 33 other teams from over 20 countries across the world through a video link.
With over 38 teams competing for the prizes, the championship is bound to be challenging to make each team give their opponents a run for their money.
Ghana’s participation in the Robofest World Championship can be dated back to 2016 and has been characterized by winning twice consecutively in 2019 and 2020. Methodist Girls SHS won the competition in 2019 while their counterparts in Prempeh College won the following year.
Meanwhile, in 2021, a private team from Ghana named Ex-Nihilo won the Unknown Mission Challenge.
The teams are led by the Ghana Robotics Academy Foundation (GRAF), which trains the participants.
Country Director Dr. Yaw Okraku-Yirenkyi, is hoping the teams from these three schools representing Ghana “will maintain the legacy”.
Robofest provides students with an avenue to design and construct autonomous robots to perform different tasks, thus, testing their skill set.
This year’s participants are tasked to design a robot that saves endangered turtles from the beach and deliver them to scientists at stations who will conduct studies to find out what causes them to be washed ashore.
They will also clean up waste materials off a designated portion of the beach using robots they have programmed in two minutes.
About Ghana Robotics Academy Foundation (GRAF)
GRAF was founded in 2011 by Dr. Ashitey Trebi-Ollennu, a Chief Robotics Engineer with NASA's Jet Propulsion in Pasadena CA and run by Dr. Yaw Okraku-Yirenkyi as the Country Director for the Foundation's Robotics inspired Science Education (RiSE) program.
Overall, the program seeks to help students connect the theory of math and science to the practical application to take up careers in these fields.
The foundation has trained and led Ghana's teams to be champions at the international robotics competition.
It is from the annual national competitions that they select candidates who prove themselves to represent the country at the international level.
So far, RiSE has trained over 8,000 students at various levels of education.