The Word Robot Olympiad (WRO) is a prestigious robotics competition, with its first version being in 2004. Using LEGO Mindstorms, it can engage with students from the age of 4 to 19 in 4 different competitions: Robomission, Robosport, Future Innovators and Future Engineers. Now, more than 38,000 students from 85+ countries are involved in the competition. Each year, countries from every corner of the globe send the best of their nations to compete in the international competition of that year. For the 2023 edition in Panama, the theme of Connecting the World was chosen, reflecting to Panama’s significant contribution on international maritime trade and communications worldwide, such as the Panama Canal.

Unfortunately, due to the recent mining protests going on in Panama, this year’s edition required extra security then in previous years. The WRO not only provides a valuable learning experience for competitors, but also for local students. However due to Safety and Security of the competitors being a priority for the organizers, the local student experience of the competition was limited. Nevertheless, with the unexpected obstacle which arose, the competition was still happened at the level it promised to.

Oman sent a Robomission Senior Team comprising of Yousof Zarrabi and Atharv Yadav to compete against 90 other teams in the category. Their efforts resulted to them achieving bronze, however most importantly, an invaluable learning experience in which they would be able to take with them into their future aspirations.

Notably, these types of experiences help students develop their interest into STEM and hone their knowledge and skills in the relevant fields. It is a brilliant opportunity for students to not only learn about issues we face in the world but understand how to make solutions to tackle such problems. Of course, these challenges are not easy to solve, and that is reflected to the difficulty in the competition. However, this difficulty gets the inner cogs and wheels of the young children's brains at work to plan, code, build, execute, test, and rebuild to find the perfect solution.

Next year’s competition will be held at Izmir in Turkey looking into the theme of Earth Allies, in which it is to be inevitable that more teams from Oman will be competing in the tournament.