Vietnamese students win world's largest robot tournament

A group of Vietnamese students are part of the world's largest robot championship alliance, bringing together teams from more than 190 countries and territories.

Vietnam FGC team participated in the First Global Challenge (FGC) tournament in Singapore from October 7 to 10.

Previously, 9 members were selected from the Vietnam Robotics Challenge tournament organized by FPT University. The students came from many schools, in many provinces and cities such as Hanoi - Amsterdam High School, Duong Quang Ham High School (Hung Yen), Thai Phien High School (Hai Phong)...

At the tournament, the team entered the top 24 strongest teams. In the final round, the organizers divided the 24 teams into 8 alliances to compete with each other. As a result, the alliance that the Vietnamese team participated in came out on top.

"This is the highest award the team has won after 7 years of participating in this tournament," said team leader Le Ngoc Tuan, founder of the Maker Viet education organization, on the morning of October 11.

In 2017, when they first participated in the tournament, the Vietnamese student team ranked 57th out of 153 participating teams. According to Mr. Tuan, this year's achievement was achieved thanks to three factors: the robot was good enough for the team to enter the top 24, the team members competed well, were confident, and were lucky.

The Vietnamese team consists of 9 members, but only 5 came to Singapore this time. Photo: Le Ngoc Tuan — The FGC Vietnam team consists of 9 members, of which 5 members came to Singapore to attend the tournament. Photo: *Le Ngoc Tuan*

FGC is an international robotics competition for high school students organized annually by FIRST Global, a non-profit organization focusing on STEAM education in the US. The competition is considered the largest in the world due to the size of the teams coming from more than 190 countries and territories. In addition, the homemade robot, measuring 50cm on each side, is also one of the largest robots used in high school competitions.

Each year, the organizers will come up with a theme, related to the world's major challenges, encouraging the young generation to build STEAM skills to solve them.

This year’s theme focused on the role of hydrogen in renewable energy and carbon reduction. Each team had to build a robot and model the problem in a robotics format. In the final round, the teams competed in 10 rounds. Rankings and points were based on the performance of the robot.