Team Guyana Robotics Heads Off To Washington DC Robotics Challenge Tonight

Georgetown, Guyana – July 12th, 2017- The six players and three adult mentors who will represent Guyana at the First Global Robotics Championship in Washington DC are preparing to depart Guyana tonight (Wednesday, July 12, 2107).

The team met on Wednesday at the 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 $2.5million GY and The Ministry of Public Infrastructure which donated $500k GY.

Operational expenses were donated by Diaspora members, The Office of The First Lady and several private corporate donors.  More than 160 countries including fifteen 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 6 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 6 students and 3 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.