ExxonMobil `engineering volunteers’ to help prepare STEM team for Dubai, South Korea robotics events - Guyana Coordinator
Stabroek Business has learnt that the national teams being prepared for two forthcoming major international robotics events in Dubai and South Korea are to receive valuable technical help in their preparation from ExxonMobil, as STEM Guyana, the local entity behind the building of a technology base at the level of young Guyanese, continues to work with public and private sector agencies to ensure Guyana’s participation in the events.
Earlier this week, STEM Guyana cofounder Karen Abrams told Stabroek Business that arising out of discussions between the organization and ExxonMobil, an understanding had been reached that the company now gearing to deliver Guyana’s ‘first oil’ early next year will offer “technical help” in the preparation of robots for the forthcoming competitions. “ExxonMobil has committed engineering volunteers to the team in terms of the building of a solid 2019 machine (and this is) promising,” Abrams told Stabroek Business.
Describing the development as a “major breakthrough” for STEM Guyana’s “efforts to reach out for support to both the public and private sectors,” ahead of the two international events, Abrams, while not entering into the details of the specific ways in which the technical help from the American oil company will be forthcoming told the Stabroek Business that the organization will be seeking to “use ExxonMobil‘s support to build on Guyana’s achievement in the 2017 international robotics competition in Washington, where the country’s first ever team in such a tournament placed tenth.
And according to Abrams the gesture by ExxonMobil was reflective of “just the kind of public/private sector collaboration that is needed for STEM Guyana to make a mark. When something like this happens it tells us that our work is attracting worthwhile attention and that we are going someplace,” Abrams said.
Abrams says, meanwhile, that garnering all of the requisite resources to enable teams to be in both Dubai and South Korea is still a work in progress. “We have had some help from government and from other sources but, frankly, we are still some distance away from the target that we need to meet if we are to be part of both events,” Abrams said.
Dubai is scheduled to host the first Global Robotics Challenge in October this