Robotics: A fun way to build STEM knowledge

Most high school functions, also known as “funkies”, have a high number of students in attendance.

These funkies include drama and music festivals, academic symposiums for maths, languages and humanities subjects, sports tournaments and even religious functions like the weekend challenge.

Rarely would you find a STEM-oriented funkie with a huge number of attendees as compared to the above-named events.

This is the case when walking into the African Advanced Level Telecommunications Institute (AFRALTI).

Students in groups are scattered all over outside the main hall at the institute.

Every group is working on a LEGO-built robot that is placed on a colourful playing mat.

They are doing last-minute trials before the actual World Robot Olympiad (WRO) competition starts.

WRO is a global robotics competition for young people.

The World Robot Olympiad competition uses Lego Mindstorms robotics kits manufactured by LEGO Education.

Yellow school vans stream in and more students walk up to the registration desk to register their respective teams.

Programmed robot kits are seen moving about and students are busy on their laptops, confirming that they have fed their kits the right coding language.

STEM Impact Centre partnerships adviser Eric Nyamwaro says the future as we know it is technology; specifically, robotics.

“Robotics is now coming in to help in the health, agriculture and even production sector,” Nyamwaro said.

WRO COMPETITION

This year, the STEM Impact Centre partnered with WRO to hold the competition at the national level.

This was a start-off point to select teams that would represent the country at the global competition.

“It is the first time we are having the competition in Kenya. We want to give our children the opportunity to compete with the best of the best from other parts of the world,” Nyamwaro said.

The STEM Impact Centre is a mobile tinkering lab that provides a creative space and resources for the youth, learners, educators and communities.

They are enabled to explore Science, Technologies, Engineering and Mathematics, creative coding, physical computing and incubation of viable STEM ideas.

This year’s international competition will be taking place from November 17-19 in Dortmund, Germany.

Winning teams from the national competition will compete with other teams at the global level.

There was a representation of nine schools with 68 students participating at AFRALTI.

These were public, private and international schools.

They included Ndururumo High School, Njumbi High School, OLC Mugoiri Girls High School and Samoei Boys High School.

Others included Jawabu school, Light Academy, Makini Cambridge School, Oshwal Academy and Qubaa Muslim School.

“We have never had a chance to host such an event here before. This was a good time and it happened after Covid restrictions were lifted,” Nyamwaro said.

“Our desire was to have as many students apply and participate.”

Nyamwaro said the robotics competition was very important, especially at such a time when the country came from a highly contested election and the arguments were about technology.

“All talks were about the general electoral technology. It was either an algorithm, a JPEG, or a PDF,” he said.

“We are building a future for our country where they can come up with solutions so they can solve the different challenges we face.”

The robotic competition was an opportunity for young children to showcase their creativity in terms of coming up with robots that are solving different missions.

“Our hope is that as they continue growing, they can identify different pathways where they become professionals and help our country innovate and make money out of it,” Nyamwaro said.

ROBO MISSION

The theme for the 2022 WRO was: “My Robot, My Friend”.

The whole idea was: How do you make a robot your friend so that it can help you accomplish tasks?

There were four different levels of the competition: elementary level, junior level, senior level and future engineers.

Different teams were judged according to how their robot performed. Whether it managed to do different tasks, how many it did, if it managed to perform one task at a time and complete it, the dimensions of the robot and whether the robot programmed by the students alone or by their coaches.

There were also other criteria that were used to award marks. 

The elementary level involved children aged between eight and 10 years.

“Their mission was very simple because, at that age, they are not very technically advanced in terms of tech capacity,” Nyamwaro said.

On the playing field, their bots had to move human beings, cut grass and basically move ladybugs.

LEGO pieces that represent these items were placed randomly on the playing field.

The bots were supposed to identify the items and execute an already programmed command.

The bots were supposed to be fully programmed by the children and be able to adapt to the random placing of items on the playing field.

This category had two registered teams, with the overall winning team coming from the STEM Impact Centre.

The junior level involved students aged between 11 and 15 years.

“Their missions are a bit difficult but not as complex as compared to the ones above them,” Nyamwaro said.

Their bots competed in a “factory-setting” playing field, where they had to identify places where there were fires and extinguish, move a chemical object to a safe space and identify human beings in the burning building and move pieces to show their location.

This level had seven teams, with the overall winning team coming from Oshwal Academy.

The senior level involved students aged between 16 and 19 years.

Most high school and secondary school students participated and their mission was very complex and precise.

Their competition was on a “hospital-setting” playing field, where they had to play with patients, move water bottles from one place to another and basically identify rooms where there were patients.

This level had more than 11 teams, with the overall winner coming from Ndururumo High School.

Future engineers was the last level and only had one registered team from Makini Cambridge school.

The difference between this level and the other four is that students were using Arduino kits and not LEGO kits.

Nyamwaro said this is one area that they felt they needed to invest in heavily.

“We want to engage our students in this area mostly to promote STEM. This level was part of the engineering sector of STEM.”

Winners from each level, together with the team from the future engineers level, will be proceeding to Germany.

STEM SUPPORT

The competition elicited numerous reactions from the attendees, coaches and even parents who accompanied their children.

Some of them were happy, others excited, nervous and some even anxious.

Students from Qubaa Muslim School had a rather adventurous and educative time.

Early this year, a team of boys from the school participated in the FIRST LEGO League challenge, where they represented East Africa in Texas, USA.

Qubaa Muslim School STEM coach Abdulrahman Rijal said he carried a new team of Grade 4 and 5 learners, who competed at the junior level, as well as a team of girls who participated at the senior level.

“This time, I wanted to try something new and bring equality. Our school is a religious school but then girls should be able to get involved and interact in STEM just like boys do,” he said.

Rijal also said he expected the teams would win and learn a lot about robotics from the competition.

“The students lacked seriousness when we were preparing for the competition and did not understand how challenging such competitions could get,” Rijal said.

“I wanted them to learn and engage with others so they can improve.”

To Rijal, the competition was tough and even though they were defeated, he still felt the learners gained a lot from the contest.

“I believe the senior teams have done their level best but they need more nurturing. They consider such things as a play but they do not know how serious this can get in helping them build their future,” he said.

Soud Saeed, a Grade 5 competitor from Qubaa Muslim School, said being his first time competing, he felt very happy but was nervous because they were not fully prepared for the contest.

“When I go back to school, I will put more effort because now I have known what to do so that next time, I will excel,” he said.

Mariam Said, also a high school student at Qubaa Muslim School, said that being her first time participating, she is looking forward to competing in similar contests in the future.

“We did not win this one but there is always next time,” she said.

Julia Wanjiru, teacher and coach from Ndururumo High School, said the competition was tough but the school had competed in similar competitions before.

“We learnt about robotics in 2018, when we went to Karen for training, and since then, we have been helping our students in terms of teaching and generally exposing them so they can explore the tech field,” she said.

Julia said all teams were well prepared so they could adjust to problems such as light intensity that would possibly affect their robots.

Nilesh Dodia and Prakash Modashiya were some of the parents who supported their children during the competition.

Their sons, Maadhav Dodia and Vrajesh Modashiya, emerged winners of the junior category.

Nilesh and Prakash said as the boys prepared for the competition, they did it virtually.

“Unfortunately, we did not find a local coach, so they actually learnt through video conferencing with their team coach, who is based in India, and also used YouTube,” Nilesh said.

To Nilesh, Kenya lacks serious support on the robotics front.

“This competition is actually a perfect gateway for students who want to involve themselves in robotics in future in terms of technologies,” he said.

Nilesh said robotics in young children needs time and maximum support.

“We have been supporting them in terms of tuition. They have been having lessons every day after school and it became very intense, especially during the last month,” he said.

“As parents, we do not know this field much. All we can do is support them with whatever they need us to,” Prakash said.

ROBOTICS FOUNDATION

Nyamwaro said that as learners keep advancing on the STEM front, pathways keep broadening.

“In our normal day-to-day training, besides the LEGO, we have other tools and resources that we use to teach our children,” he said.

“These include Arduino for the younger ones, SCRATCH, which we teach our children at the foundational level, and which is also part of the CBC curriculum.”

LEGO being one of the solutions available in the market, other brands they use include Vex.

“These are some of the technologies we have currently, but with more resources, we will bring in more that we can use,” Nyamwaro said.

He added that for the competition, most students used python coding language.

“Just the same way we speak vernacular, Swahili and English, coding is a language but for machines,” Nyamwaro said.

He also said that society needs to look at robotics as a way of democratising STEM.

This means making STEM available to learners regardless of where they come from.

“When we look at the CBC, there is a track on digital literacy. This keeps on growing as one advances in different levels of digital knowledge,” he said.

“Right from Grade 4, children actually start learning how to code. Where the world is heading, we cannot avoid machines. We are helping learners understand the language of machines.”

Every parent needs to support their child in venturing into the tech space.

“It is good to have a coder in each household. This would mean that every household would actively participate in the digital economy and can actively participate in creating virtual jobs,” Nyamwaro said.

“As they grow older and upscale their pathways, they can actively involve themselves in different fields. Some of them include mobile app development, drone development.”