A total of 230 students in the competition created projects that combined art and robotics, and all were evaluated by a jury consisting of students and professors from various faculties and industry experts.
Professor Petar Kolar from VERN's undergraduate Internet of Things program participated as a jury member at the national FIRST LEGO League project-robotics competition, which was attended by a total of 230 students from all over Croatia last Saturday.
This is a competition organized by the Croatian Robotics Association and the Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computing, and Croatia is one of 110 countries where this competition is held, in which around 680,000 competitors have participated so far.
The Croatian students were divided into 28 teams, and they were tasked with the theme "MasterPiece", that is, to think about and explore how to combine art and robotics in a project. After an initial competition in the robot game, they performed in front of a jury of experts, where they presented their projects in 30-minute presentations.
"It is incredible how a three-digit number of children not only play with technology, but through play also create projects that even students of our technical faculties would not be ashamed of. Our small but great competitors showed their excellence in four categories: Innovation Project , where they presented their innovative solutions that connect art and robotics, then Robot Design , where they presented the functionality of their robots, designed to participate in the third category, Robot Game , in which robots from different teams compete against each other, and Core Values , where throughout the competition the teams demonstrated a willingness to work as a team, inclusiveness of all team members and their mutual differences, and most importantly, that they had a good time and learned a lot of new things," summed up Professor Kolar after he was presented with a certificate of appreciation for his contribution to the organization and implementation of the competition.
The victory was ultimately won by students from Buzet, gathered in the "Mecha Penguins" team, who created a mobile application/game on the theme of diving, while second place was won by students (team Regoč) from Prigorje Brdovečki, and third place was won by students from Fažana (team BIT KIDS 101).
The top five teams are now preparing for the regional competition in Slovenia, and the best among them will advance to the world championship.
