The Epiteugma Revved Up team from Cyprus has won the FIRST Tech Challenge Championship Spain held this weekend at the American School of Barcelona. The team has won the Inspire Award, giving them the chance to travel to the United States and take part in the world final in Detroit from 24th to 27th April.
This year sees the start of the FIRST Tech Challenge in Spain, thanks to the backing of the Scientia Foundation, the University of Vic - Central University of Catalonia and Girbau Group. A total of two hundred people aged between 16 and 18 took part in it, in 18 teams from Catalonia and the rest of Spain, but also from Italy, the Netherlands, Germany, Cyprus and the Czech Republic.
Apart from the winner, The Encrypted Gentlemen from the Netherlands took the Think Award for the ability to solve engineering problems creatively. The HP SA team from the Netherlands won the Connect Award for being the best at connecting the elements of STEM. The RoboCats from Germany won the Collins Aerospace Innovate Award for design and innovation in a robot. The FROG (Frog Robots of Germany) team took the Design Award for using industrial design in a robot. The Can-Alpha Space team from Tenerife in Spain won the Motivate Award for teamwork, while the German Eagles won the Control Award for the best use of sensors and software for the purposes of functionality in the field. Finally, the German Eagles and FROG (Frog Robots Of Germany) took the Winning Alliance Award, while the Mechanical Sharks from Manlleu (Catalonia) and the Casimir Tech team from the Netherlands won the Finalist Alliance Award.
The most important STEM programme in the world
FIRST Tech Challenge is the most important STEM programme in the world for young people aged between 16 and 18, attracting 47,000 entrants and 4,711 teams from 25 countries all over the world. It is engineering and fun in their purest state with the aim of fostering scientific and technological vocations among young people. The FIRST Tech Challenge joins other programmes also run by the Scientia, Foundation, like the FIRST LEGO League and the FIRST LEGO League Junior.
Entrants in the FIRST Tech Challenge Championship Spain had to design, create, test and programme autonomous robots operated by controllers to perform a series of missions and tasks on a specific test area to meet the "Rover Ruckus" challenge, which this year focused on exploring the galaxies beyond the solar system. To build the robots, the teams were able to use real parts providing they did not exceed the specified size and weight, and had to present their "engineering log" to a jury to explain how they built the robot.