Robotics competition to build interest in STEM

This year’s Australian Regional FIRST Robotics Competition (FRC) will run from 17–19 March at Sydney Olympic Park. The event will feature nearly 50 teams from the United States, Singapore, Taiwan, China, India and Australia competing to see which robots can catapult boulders and scale obstacles to ‘conquer’ an opponent’s tower.

The competition is a culmination of six weeks of teamwork: designing, building and programming robots to enter the event. In order to stimulate creative thinking and design, all teams worked with the same construction materials and control system components to build their robot.

“Our program is designed to guide and support well-rounded scientists, engineers and tech entrepreneurs. It’s one thing to know how to build a robot that can complete a set of criteria in a game, but we also want to equip these kids to have the skills to lead a team, and to collaborate with their growing network of peers to tackle bigger, real-world issues with the skills they’ve picked up along the way,” said FIRST Australia Regional Director Luan Heimlich.

The competition comes at a time where Australia is experiencing a grave shortage in STEM skills — data from PwC shows that shifting just 1% of the workforce into STEM roles would add $57.4 billion to Australia’s GDP over the next 20 years.

“Almost half of all employers expect requirements for STEM-qualified employees to increase in the next five years alone. Continued education in this space is vitally important to ensure Australia’s workforce will have the ability to support future industries,” said Macquarie University Vice-Chancellor Professor S Bruce Dowton.

“Initially brought to Australia by Macquarie University in 2006, the FIRST Robotics competition is an example of how we can not only inspire school students’ interest in STEM, but create for them a pathway to pursue these fields into further study, careers and entrepreneurship in a variety of areas.”

Originally published here.