By Arkady Petrov
RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – Of the eight teams representing Brazil in Uruguay’s International Robotics Open, six won awards. The Big Bang team, from Industry Social Service (SESI) of Birigui (SP), was the champion of the competition held between May 30th and June 1st, in Montevideo.
The São Paulo team won the competition, which included 700 students from countries such as Germany, the United States, Israel, Italy, Russia, South Africa, Turkey, and many others.
The São Paulo team also came first in the Robot Challenge category. The Brazilian students participating in the tournament are between nine and sixteen years old.
Valter Júnior, computer support analyst and technician for the Big Bang team, explained to Agência Brasil that this year’s topic concentrated on solving astronauts’ physical and emotional issues during space travel.
“With our project, we were able to block out cosmic radiation.” According to the teacher, using light and inexpensive elements, students successfully blocked out ninety percent of cosmic radiation.
“We’ve seen that inside spaceships, astronauts suffer greatly from radiation and do not wear any protection. We were able to build a very light suit for them to wear inside the shuttle, and this helped greatly to win, as it was a groundbreaking solution. Our project was tested by a nuclear physicist and also at Unicamp (University of Campinas), and the feedback was very positive.”
Students from the Tecnoway team in Caxias do Sul (RS) came second in the overall ranking. The team also won first place in the Robot Performance Award.
This year alone, Brazilians have won awards at the Robotics World Cup in Houston (USA), the Arkansas (USA) tournament, and the Turkish International Open. Brazilian teams compete in three other international competitions: the Lebanon Open in June, the Asia Open, and the West Virginia Tournament (USA) in July.