ASTANA – Young inventors from Kazakhstan recently won the LEGO Education Creativity Award at the International World Robot Olympiad in Delhi, India.
The International World Robot Olympiad (WRO) finale was held Nov. 25-27. The theme for this year’s WRO season was “Rap the Scrap,” focusing around reducing, recycling and managing waste. The competition offered a unique opportunity for young inventors aged between 9-25 to showcase their technological innovations, get noticed and potentially find ways of commercialising their ideas.
This year, Kazakhstan was represented by a strong national team which presented unique solutions on waste management. It took several months for the school students to develop the project. The project was the winner of the national contest held prior to the grand finale.
One of the solutions the Kazakh team presented was an orbiting satellite collecting space debris. The station uses a mechanism of an umbrella to collect debris in its orbit. Then it pushes the collected debris towards the Sun so that the space waste can be burned and destroyed. The robot is based on the LEGO Education EV3 model with solar panels and thrusters.
In addition to the space station, the Kazakh team presented an Eco Home project, an integrated waste processing system built into a kitchen. According to developers Aldiyar Zhangulov and Sultan Nasyrov, their project is not only environmentally friendly, but cost effective, as it offers a way to reuse processed organic waste as a fertiliser.
“These facilities have been already used in the U.S. and in Kazakhstan, but we noticed that they do not use organic materials, they use glass. However, in everyday life organics are used often, so we have added organics and removed the glass. Thus, the facility will produce more fertilisers. It is cost-effective,” project creator and student at Nazarbayev Intellectual School Zhangulov said.
WRO competitions have a 12-year history. The WRO has been held in more than 50 countries, with more than 20,000 teams entering the competitions every year.
