Thursday, 3/30/2017
The Azurém Campus sports
hall, in Guimarães, hosted the RoboParty 2017, between the 2nd and 4th
March 2017. The initiative is already in its 11th edition and
counted over 500 participants.
The Automation and Robotics Group of the Department of Industrial
Electronics (DEI) of the EEUM, UMinho’s Social Services and Bot’n Roll carried
out the 11th edition of the RoboParty 2017. This year, the event counted
with over 500 participants from all over the country, including teams from Brazil.
The
opening solemn ceremony started with the
intervention of UMinho’s Rector, António M. Cunha, the President of Guimarães
Municipality, Domingos Bragança, the Directorate-General for Education,
represented by João Carlos Sousa, the President of the EEUM, João Monteiro, among
others
individualities. The participants highlighted the importance of this
event for education, technology and the exchange of knowledge between youngsters.
The RoboParty 2017 aims to teach how to create autonomous mobile robots
in a simple and fun way. “Between three days and two nights, young people learn
to build and program a robot and participate in three challenges. Afterwards,
there is a continuation of this work, since they own the robots. This whole
environment is a lot of fun for these young people”, Fernando Ribeiro, one of
the coordinator of this initiative, explained.
Most participants are between 15 and 18 years old and come mostly from
secondary schools from north to south of the country. Motivation, fun and a willingness
to learn were the keywords in the three days of the event. "It is a very
interesting activity for secondary school students like me, but also for the
younger ones. The University of Minho does a great job with RoboParty and
should continue, because it is good for everyone ", Artur Santos, of the
Basic and Secondary School of Fornos de Algodres, in Guarda, highlighted.
In addition to the non-stop event (the young people sleep in the sports hall),
there also were various fun and sporting activities, such as chess, table
tennis and badminton. A three-day educational programme that joined kids and
adults willing to have fun learning electronics, programming and mechanics.
Between 2nd and 4th March 2017, the sports hall of the Campus of Azurém was transformed into a true robotics workshop. 11 years of an initiative that already counts with about 5000 participants.
+ video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GaXRi8yfTRM
+ photo
gallery: https://www.facebook.com/pg/escoladeengenhariaum/photos/?tab=album&album_id=1273791616003423
+ info: http://www.roboparty.org/; http://www.dei.uminho.pt/
