The six players and three adult mentors who will represent Guyana are on their way to Washington DC where the First Global Robotics Championship will be held. The team recently met at their National Sports Hall to crate their robot, receive their shirts and discuss last minute details regarding their journey. Team Guyana’s travel was supported by The Ministry of Education which donated $2.5 million.
The Ministry of Public Infrastructure also donated $500,000 while the operational expenses were donated by Diaspora members, The Office of The First Lady and several private corporate donors.
More than 160 countries including 15 Caribbean countries and many developing countries will be represented at the global competition.
The competition encourages cooperation by grouping teams in several different alliances made up of three countries in each of three rounds of competition. Each team will have an opportunity to get to know and work closely with six other teams. Each team was challenged to build a robot which will gather [simulated] water particles, sort the contaminated from the clean water particles and then find a way to make the robot deposit those particles in specific locations. The robot also has to be programmed to pull itself up off the ground. Teams built their robots with no formal instruction, and limited experience using nuts, bolts, motors, sensors and other parts provided by Vex Robotics.
Team Guyana includes six students and three mentors. The students are: Vevekeanand Ramnarace, Ryan Benschop, Christopher Nelson, Anthony Frank, Arrianna Mahase and Sahief Poese. The mentors are: coach Ricky Chan; team manager Farnaz Baksh; and PR Specialist Horace Mosley.