Two students from Hsinchu City’s Dongyuan Elementary School have become the two youngest Taiwanese to obtain a top prize in international programming contests after winning the grand prize in the six to eight-year-old category at the Wonder League Robotics Competition earlier this month.
Peng Liang-yu (彭亮瑜) and Lai Pin-hao (賴品豪) said they grew up with tech-savvy fathers and have expressed a strong interest in robot programming since they attended extra-curricular activities in first grade.
They studied for the competition for six months in their free time after classes.
Photo: Tsai Chang-sheng, Taipei Times
The competition theme this year was ocean conservation, asking participants to design robots for reclaiming maritime trash. The robots had to be capable of detecting marine life and, in the event of creatures becoming lost, be capable of delivering them back to their original habitat.
Participants were also expected to design and create posters or video content espousing marine conservation.
Peng and Lai visited the Hsinchu coast to make their video content.
For the device that would deliver lost creatures back to their original habitat, the two originally planned to use chopsticks, but had to use wooden scoops used for eating ice cream after discovering that chopsticks were not ideal for the task.
The competition is an annual event that is open to all schoolchildren learning to program.
Launched in 2015 by Wonder Workshop, an education and robotics start-up, it challenges students to combine programming, science, technology, engineering, arts and mathematics, encouraging children to work together and express themselves.
The competition this year involved 7,900 teams, or 35,000 students, from more than 69 nations.
Three Taiwanese teams won awards at the competition, with two other teams placing fourth and sixth in the nine to 11-year-old category.
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