By Carine George
UNIVERSITY CITY, SHARJAH – Ten teams of high school students participated in a robot-programming competition during a Sumo Robot Boot Camp organized by the Department of Electrical Engineering at the American University of Sharjah on Feb. 25-26.
The competition was sponsored by Petrofac.
The event started at 9:30 a.m. on both days and around 26 students from different schools in the United Arab Emirates participated in it.
Students attended two sessions on the first day to get introduced to the basics of programming a robot. Attendees were provided with lab manuals with sample codes to control a robot’s microcontroller. Groups who finished coding their robot early were given the opportunity to learn about the robot-building process.
The programmed robots fought together in a sumo ring on the second day of the event. For a group to win the competition, their robot should push the opposing robot out of the ring in a match. The top three teams received prizes of 1000, 600, and 300 AED for first, second, and third places respectively.
Other engineering departments also hosted boot camps throughout the semester to educate high-school students about the different majors at AUS.
