Three gold, a silver and a bronze medal for Team Seychelles

Fifth overall finish on leaderboard

Five medals ? three gold, a silver and a bronze ? are the total harvest of Team Seychelles at the First Global Roboco Challenge, earning them fifth place overall at the competition.

This challenge took place in RoboCo, a PC video game developed by Filament Games in collaboration with FIRST Global.

In the game, teams built and controlled robots to conquer tricky challenges inspired by real world robotics applications.

Held from November 1 to December 18, the Challenge tasked participants with playing RoboCo on their computers, capturing their best attempts at each round.

A total of 37 countries took part in the challenge which was carried in three phases.

In the preliminary phase, or qualifiers, Team Seychelles came out ninth, winning a gold medal for the fastest robot.

In the second round which was a play-off, Team Seychelles came out 10th out of 20 countries, wining a second gold medal for the fastest robot, while in the final, Team Seychelles came out 5th out of the 10 finalists, winning a bronze medal for the fastest robot, and silver medal for the most cost-effective robot.

Team Seychelles also won a gold medal for the most creative robot overall.

Led by team manager Xavier Estico, who is the director general in the division of science, technology and innovation (DSTI) within the Ministry of Investment, Entrepreneurship and Industry, Team Seychelles was made up of Tahani Malbrook (Anse Boileau secondary school), Yannick Hollanda (International School Seychelles), Shakthi Alexander (International School Seychelles), Stephanie Lebon (Independent School), Jayabalaji Gunasekaram (Independent School), Michel Hoareau (Belonie secondary), Naveen Volcère (Mont Fleuri secondary), and Nerrick Clarisse (Beau Vallon secondary).

They received the support of Mikhail Rudchenko of the International School, while Joseph Raj and Chinduja Kamalraj were the team’s mentors.

According to Mr Estico, the result is very good for a small country like Seychelles, taking into account the small amount of time to prepare for the challenge and also the academic commitments of the students who were right in the middle of exams preparation at that time.

He congratulated the team for devotion and commitment, and also the mentors and parents for their support.

Being in the top 10 globally, Mr Estico said it is very important for our youth, and that it should be a motivation and guide for others.

Reactions of two team members:

Shakthi Alexander: “This was a really good experience for every member of our team and I really enjoyed working with them, sharing our works and learning from others. I think that coming out 5th out of 37 countries is a really good achievement given the time period we had to build the robots. I’m looking forward to the next FIRST Global challenge which might come up during March of 2022.”

Jayabalaji Gunasekaram: “During the start of November 2021, my computer science teacher had enrolled a colleague and myself to participate in the First Global Roboco Challenge. About a week later I went to the first meeting we had as a team at the DSTI office. We all introduced ourselves and were assigned our roles. We began working the following day. We faced many challenges along the way but we carried on and worked collaboratively to overcome the hurdles. This was quite a new, challenging and educational experience as I learnt a multitude of things as we built the virtual robots. Moreover it was also quite tiring as we sometimes had to work late at night. I could not have done this without the support of my parents as they encouraged me a lot.”

Source: Seychelles Nation