PM Mitsotakis visits ‘FIRST Global Challenge’ robotics event for students at SEF

Athens.- Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis paid a visit on Saturday to the “FIRST Global Challenge”, the international competition of student robotics taking place in Greece for the first time, with national teams from 193 countries. The competition opened Thursday at the Peace and Friendship Stadium (SEF) and will end on Sunday.

Welcoming the teams and Dean Kamen, founder of competition organizer FIRST Global, Mitsotakis referred to his recent trip to New York for the UN General Assembly meetings and said that the students attending “convey a message to us as to how to collaborate to resolve the issues of the future.” Greece, he said, is where democracy and the Olympic Games were born, adding that “a large part of the science related to building these robots was invented for the first time in this country.” He expressed confidence in the younger generation and in helping to resolve complex issues.

Mitsotakis, who was accompanied by Digital Governance Deputy Minister Konstantinos Kyranakis, was briefed by Kamen on the annual event that aims to “empower the globe’s two billion young people to cooperatively solve the world’s challenges through STEM” (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics), as the First Global site mentions. The PM and minister also had the opportunity to speak with students and see the robots they had constructed.

The Greek team includes 100 students from all over Greece, and the premier expressed pleasure at having a large team and at participating in collaborative efforts with other countries on the challenges of climate change and artificial intelligence.

Dean Kamen

The annual event includes students aged 14 to 18, and is founded on the principles of the Olympic Games by Kamen’s nonprofit FIRST Global. Kamen is a renowned inventor and entrepreneur whose inventions include a portable dialysis machine, a vascular stent, the Segway Personal Transporter and the Slingshot water purifier.

The Athens event is being held in collaboration with the Ministry of Digital Governance.

Students constructed their robots before arriving at the Challenge based on a kit mailed to all. For any issues, they address themselves to the Robot Hospital, where they can get repair, programming help, spare parts or tools, and charge batteries. Students are being called upon to collaborate on specific thematic units related to the greatest challenges oplanet, with this year’s theme being sustainable production of food (“Feeding the Future”).

On the first day of the competition, robots were tested and students challenged to find an innovative solution to a key problem in their region that would improve access to environmentally friend food sources. The best ideas were presented publicly. One of them included the Irish team’s solution to maximize their production through the use of electricity and reduction of fertilizers. Another, by the South Korea team, worked on reducing seaweed production attributed to rising sea temperatures, and presented a submarine vehicle with incorporated sensors and cameras to measure temperature and saltiness at sea.

A collaboration vs competition

Speaking to ANA-MPA, Deputy Dean of the Yale School of Engineering & Applied Sciences Vince Wilczynski, who is attending as an officer of the FIRST Foundation, said that the event is not a competition, but a collaboration. He expressed enthusiasm at this year’s competition being held in Athens, saying that “we are trying to inspire young people just as ancient Athens did,” when it mobilized people in important events and transmitted wisdom and knowledge.

In an example of the collaboration fostered by the event, the Tunisian team brought sweets and wrote its own song, “Ta leme in Greece”, which they have been teaching fellow-participants in order to sing it together. The head of the team, Noor, 18, said that the song describes how participants discover the world and different cultures through this competition. She was impressed at how one event can bring students from the entire world together in one place, and how the competition can bring togther “robotics, culture, enthusiasm, and passion.”

source: amna.gr