Mumbai students bag laurels at Global robotics competition

A group of 7 students hailing from Mumbai have made all of us proud by shining and winning medals at the global robotics competition held in US. 157 countries participated in the FIRST (For Inspiration & Recognition of Science & Technology) global robotics Olympiad and the Mumbai students group won gold for Zhang Heng Engineering design Award while bronze for the global challenge match. The event was organised by First Global in Washington.

The competition which was conducted from July 16-18 in Washington focused on promoting Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics among students. The Indian team was supported and sponsored by  TATA ClassEdge and Yes Bank. The Indian bot was named ‘Neutrino’.

Meet the Team

15 year old Rahesh Saraf was the team Captain as well as the youngest member who has quite a lot of experience in participating at numerous STEM competitions. Other significant members included Aadiv Shah – ‘The Spokesperson’ who is a hardcore mechanical engineer at heart; Harsh Bhatt – ‘The Alliance Strategist’ who has completed class 12 and aspires to take a course in design; Vatsin Suchak – The ‘Alliance Analyst’ who started his passion in robotics at the young age of 9; Adhyyan Sekhsaria – The 16 year old ‘Robot Tactician’ who has been involved in robotics for over 5 years; Tejas Ramdas – The 17 year old ‘Robot Controller’ who has dealt in ‘Frugal Engineering’ since his early days and Raghav Ringshia -‘Robot Driver’ who by his own admission is the terminator – of both functional and dysfunctional gadgets.

The all girl Aghanistan Team

The three day event also marked the attendance of all girl Afghan Team, whose visas were rejected twice by the State Department and an online petition and appeals were done to revoke the decision. Finally, after the intervention of U.S. President Trump, they arrived and were honoured with Rajaa Cherkaoui El Moursli award for courageous achievement. They were even greeted by the first daughter Ivanka Trump at the venue.