Preiļi Robotics Championship held at the gymnasium on 28 January
On 28 January 2017 the Preiļi Robotics Championship took place at the Jānis Eglītis Preiļi State Gymnasium (JEPVĢ). This kind of robotics competition was held in Latgale for the first time! The aim of the competition was to popularise robotics and the importance of the exact sciences! The target audience was young people from Latvian schools, especially in Latgale, but the competition turned into an international one, as 1/5 of the participants’ robots were from Lithuania!
At the start of the competition, the participants were greeted by a representative of the competition organisers, Juris Erts, the director of JEPVĢ, Ligita Pauniņa, the chair of the Preiļi District Council, Maruta Plivda, a member of the 12th Saeima, Aldis Adamovičs, and Sintija Vojevodska performed with a musical greeting.
In total, 168 robots from 32 institutions/organisations/clubs took part in the competition. The participants built their robots using LEGO sets or using electronic components in a free structure. The robot construction had requirements for size and weight, and other construction restrictions and rules were also defined, as described in the rules. This year the competition was held in the MiniSumo, Line following, Folkrace and iRobot events. In some events the participants were divided into age groups – pupils or amateurs. For the Folkrace competition a track built in Preiļi was used, which was built with the help of Uldis Čerpakovskis, the crafts teacher of Preiļi 1st Primary School.
During the competition, places were won on 9 podiums! The winners of 1st–3rd places received valuable prizes, which could be arranged thanks to the competition’s supporters: Argus, Axel, Intrum Justitia, iRobot, Letera, Mikrotik, Preiļu celtnieks, Robotiem.lv, Salang-P, Samsung, SEB, SIA Arka Preiļi, StartIT (Accenture), TestDevLab. The main prize for 1st place in the iRobot sumo event was an iRobot Rumba! Thanks to the care of the sponsors, valuable prizes were arranged for the winners, and in addition Mikrotik gave routers to all winners. Those who took 4th place received Certificates of Appreciation for successful participation.
THANK YOU to the many pupils, technical staff and teachers of the Jānis Eglītis Preiļi State Gymnasium who took part in organising the competition!
And there are special THANKS:
Thank you to the chief referee of the competition, Māris Bečs, for conducting the competition correctly and for providing the MegaSumo ring.
Thank you to the chief referees of the competition events: line following – Edgars Bajarūns, folkrace – Armands Upenieks, sumo – Gundars Miezītis, iRobot sumo – Einārs Deksnis (Robotu skola).
Thank you to the Sigulda Children and Youth Centre, personally Edgars Bajarūns, for providing the line following tracks and for running the line following event.
Thank you to Kristaps Skutelis, better known as @krizdabz, for excellent hosting and commentary of the event! Kristaps is a passionate expert on new technologies, whose possibilities he presents through Kursors.lv (@kursorslv), radio, TV and the press.
Thank you to Ervīns Patmalnieks for providing, throughout the whole day, the opportunity for young people to get to know the Oculus virtual reality system.
Thank you to Justs Ribinickis, who joined our pupils’ video streaming team – Matīss Dambītis and Rihards Gribusts – and helped provide video streaming throughout the day by editing and broadcasting the most interesting moments of the competition.
Thank you to Jānis Ziediņš and Aivis Vagalis for providing high-quality sound for the event!
Thank you to Ginta Meikulāne for capturing moments of the competition in photographs!
Thank you to SIA Arka Preiļi for the tasty biscuits and to the canteen cooks for lunch for the competition participants!
A thrilling show was put on by the MegaSumo constructors Einārs Deksnis, Māris Bečs, Gundars Miezītis, Armands Upenieks and Kārlis Berholds with model demonstrations of MegaSumo robots. It should be noted that Einārs, Māris and Gundars hold world-level competition winner titles.
The competition results were also pleasing for the members of the Preiļi Robotics Club. In the MiniSumo event in the pupils’ group Toms Vilcāns won 1st place, Matīss Buks 3rd place, and in the Students/amateurs group Linda Madelāne received Recognition. In the Folkrace event for free-structure robots Matīss Buks won 1st place and 3rd place, while Toms Vilcāns won 2nd place.
Several Lego Sumo robot constructors made their competition debut, but this time they were just a little short of luck in reaching the podium! Thank you to all participants for preparing for the competition, thank you to Armands Upenieks and Linards Šmeiksts for the work put into preparing the team, thank you for the support to the parents’ representative Aldis Buks!
The Preiļi Robotics Club has been running for 2 years. Its beginnings were in January 2015, when Ģirts Čamanis brought to the school the Lego Mindstorm EV3 robot set won in the StartIT project’s “Decorating Christmas Trees” competition! There are currently more than 20 active members in the club.
Event video recording, photo gallery, results
Although this competition has ended, there is no time to rest, because on 25 February we must already head to the Sigulda Robot Cup!
On behalf of the organisers of the Preiļi Robotics Championship, Juris Erts