The Ministry of Science, Technology and Telecommunications (MICITT) in conjunction with Aprender Haciendo (Learn Doing), has announced that Costa Rica will host the 14th edition of the World Robot Olympiad (WRO) 2017.

“More than 3 thousand people from 55 different countries will come to our country to participate, it is a very big event” said Alejandra Sanchez from Aprender Haciendo.
According to WRO website “World Robot Olympiad is an event for science, technology and education which brings together the young people all over the world to develop their creativity and problem solving skills through challenging and educational robotics competitions”.

Every year the Olympiad poses a challenge which in this case will be revealed in January so that all participants can start preparing.

The event will take place November 10-12, 2017 and this will be the first event of this type to take place in the American continent.

The WRO 2016 took place in Delhi, India and Costa Rica participated with a delegation of 60 students between the ages of 9 and 25 years. The challenge for this edition was the creation of a robot that will solve the challenge of reducing, recycling and waste management.

The competition uses LEGO Education Mindstorms, and it involves four different categories, Regular, College, Open and Football, in this last one, teams of two robots play a game of soccer on a playing field.

“Hosting the WRO is a great opportunity to show globally the capacity of Costa Rican human resources and the efforts that different institutions make to promote technological development” said Marcelo Jenkins, Minister of Science, Technology and Telecommunication.

Aprender Haciendo is the exclusive representative for Costa Rica and Panama of LEGO Education and they currently have 5 different offices in the country.