Omar Al-Khattab school Mideast Botball champs

OMAR Bin Al-Khattab Scientific School from Qatar won the 2008 Middle East Botball Championship yesterday evening at the Diplomatic Club.

The school’s team of five students edged out eight other schools in the action-packed competition that was organised by the Carnegie Mellon University in Qatar (CMUQ).

“We worked really hard before the tournament. We didn’t expect to win, we had some tough regional competitors this year,” said Abdullah Abunada, a winning student of the Omar Bin Al-Khattab School.

The students, along with their teacher will now head to Oklahoma, US, to attend the 2008 Global Conference on Educational Robotics in July.

“When the winning team goes to the US, they will bring back an experience that will lift the level of competition for next year,” CMUQ senior systems scientist, Brett Browning said.

“Our hope in the next few years is that teams from this region will be serious competitors in robotics world championships,” he added.

The goal of the grand-prize trip this year is to increase student awareness in robotics, and meet other young men and women in the US who are also interested in the field.

Earlier, student teams were pitted against one another to see whose robot can score the most points in two-minutes. Teams also demonstrated the work they had done in order to create and programme their robot.

CMUQ brought Botball to Doha in 2005. Four teams took part in the inaugural event. In 2006 the competition increased to six teams in Doha, and in 2007 it expanded three fold to include 12 teams in Doha, three teams in Kuwait and three teams in the UAE. This year, more teams from around the Gulf region joined the competition along with three teams from Egypt.

“Carnegie Mellon is really excited that the competition has grown so much, and each year the capabilities of the teams are increasing,” Browning stated.

He further said that by introducing children to robotics and computer science through Botball, Carnegie Mellon is contributing to the Gulf region.

With the increase interest in the Botball competitions, a recent surge in the field of robotics has been noticed.

There has been a significant increase in the number of consumer robots including the Roomba vacuum cleaner, the Sony AIBO robot dog and the Robosapien humanoid companion. In addition to the entertainment aspect of robotics, more and more people are developing an interest in the practical uses of robotics and the broader field of computer science.

The nine schools that reached the finals were: Omar Bin Al-Khattab Scientific School, Doha College, Al Bayan School for Girls, Al RU’YA Bilingual School, British School of Kuwait, Al Mawakeb School-Garhoud, Al Mawakeb School-Al Barsha, American School of Alexandria and Canadian International School - Egypt.