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Unleash Your Inner Nerd: Where Education Meets Robotics
The National Education Robotics Day (NERD) is back this March in a totally revamped 6th edition.
Organized by the Education & Technology Center (ETC), The National Education Robotics Day (NERD) is an annual robotics tournament designed to promote Science, Technology, Engineering, Math and Computer Science education through autonomous robotics.
#NERD16 will take place at AUB with a brand new set of competitions by which teams of students and individuals use different types of robotics platforms and programming language to complete challenges within several categories.
“We introduced three new competitions for three new age-groups. The competition now involves students from the age of 6 up to graduate-level university students,” NERD Project Manager Farah Mtaweh told Beirut.com.
“We are having Jr. FIRST LEGO League for kids aged 6 to 9, FIRST LEGO League for students aged 9 to 15, FIRST Tech Challenge for those aged 15 to 18, and RoboFest-Vision Centric Challenge for university students; while Line Tracking and Robot SUMO will be open for all ages,”
he explained.
The tournament is open to anyone who is interested in technology, robotics, and engineering, all they have to do is form or join a team and register under the appropriate age category on the website.
“This year, we have worked on reaching more schools and more people in Lebanon by organizing local launching events in all major cities, so far we visited Tripoli, Halba, Saida, Nabatieh and will soon be coming to the Chouf and Zahle to meet with interested people and help them join the challenge in the easiest way possible,” Mtaweh noted.
The organizers chose “Robots for Nature” as a theme this year. “NERD is organized in an international outreach and themes are set by international committees. Luckily this year’s theme was more than suitable for our current situation as students will be asked to develop solutions for trash or any part related to its processing,” Mtaweh explained.
“Students in the high school category will be given the opportunity to benefit from international scholarships at both local and international universities, with over 22.5 million US dollars in grants given to participants in FTC worldwide, and five projects in the FIRST LEGO League will be chosen by Zoomal for funding,” he added.
National champions from each competition will also have the chance to represent Lebanon in the upcoming world championship that will take place in St. Louis, USA.
“We started with 16 teams and reached 50 last year in three competitions. With three more competitions added this year, we are looking for more excitement, as we hopefully add up to 70 teams,” Mtaweh concluded.
You can keep up with the latest #NERD16 updates on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
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