13 Omani teams in fray for GCC Robotics Challenge

Five universities and colleges in the Sultanate are vying for top honours in the second edition of the GCC Robotics Challenge — an annual event that has galvanised young botenthusiasts of the Sultanate into designing and programming gizmos with an eye on the competition’s much-coveted trophy.

Oman came tantalisingly close to winning the top prize in last year’s competition, but ended up with the second prize in the debut edition of the event initiated by Kuwait.

Fired up by this success, a total of 13 teams from five different Omani institutions are preparing to battle it out in this year’s challenge, which began across the Gulf region at the weekend.

Participating institutions from the Sultanate are: Sultan Qaboos University, Al Musanaa College of Technology, GUtech University, Military College of Technology and Caledonian College, said Dr Ashraf Saleem of Sultan Qaboos University’s Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, one of the focal points of the Oman round of the competition.

According to Dr Saleem, each GCC member country is required to host a local competition, the winners of which will get to compete for the top prizes in a final round due to take place in Qatar on April 28, 2017.

The Student Branch of the Society of Electrical and Computer Engineering (IEEE) at SQU is organising the Oman round tomorrow, March 20, 2017. At this round, each team will be required to design and programme a robot to go through six different challenges, such as to follow a line, move around obstacles, push a bottom, detect colours, go through a dark tunnel and so on.

The event, as with numerous other initiatives of a similar nature, is expected to give fresh impetus to the Sultanate’s goal of engendering in students a passion for innovation, creative and problem solving skills.