AFTER placing 10th out of 165 countries at their first international robotics competition, STEM Guyana is looking to dominate once again at the 2018 edition of the First Global robotics competition in Mexico this August.

The Guyana Chronicle was also able to exclusively garner information on the team that will be representing Guyana at the First Global Challenge this year, during August 16 to 18 at the Arena Ciudad de México.

The team members this year are: last year’s team captain Ryan Benschop; Arianna Mahase, Jahi Omari Ghansham, Sahief Poese and team extra, Ghwan Lynch.

First lady Sandra Granger, who spoke at the second annual robotics exhibition held on Saturday, said, “I think we are in for great things. Our team had 10 months of experience in robotics and placed 10th out of 165 countries …So I expect much greater results [this year].”

Last year, though the team had about only 10 months of experience in the field, they were able to place first at the end of the first day of the competition. On the second day however, the team was brought down after being placed in alliances with less capable robots.

Founder of the STEM Guyana and pioneer of robotics in Guyana, Karen Abrams, reflecting on last year’s performance, said: “The competition is 80 percent skill and 20 luck, or maybe a 70/30 and I believe that we’re going to have an excellent robot, so I feel like the 70 percent is under control, but who the teams get paired up with is out of the team’s control.”

However, the team is hoping to perform just as well with their Panthera Onca (scientific name for Jaguar) robot. The challenge this year will be structured around “Energy Impact” and tackling energy-efficiency problems that participants have to use their robots to solve.

Team manager Farnaz Baksh, explained to the Guyana Chronicle that the playing field this year is much larger and there are many more ways to score points.

The teams will once again be playing in alliances and will use replicas of four power generators — solar, wind, shared reaction and combustion– on the “field” (the playing arena). The robots will be tasked with working to generate power for the villages.

This year’s competition is expected to bring together more than 1,300 youth, ages 14-18, from over 180 countries. The competitors will be tasked with solving energy-efficiency problems with the robots they have built and through alliances with other countries.