World Robot Olympiad

Logo of the World Robot Olympiad

The World Robot Olympiad ( WRO for short ) is an international robot competition for children and young people. The aim of the competition is to get the participants excited about STEM topics and to motivate them to start training or study in the technical field. The WRO is held in several internationally standardized competition categories. Not all participating countries have competitions for all of these categories. The best known are the Regular Category, Open Category and Football Category. In teams of 2 or 3, the new tasks in a competition category are worked on each year together with a coach. Various robot systems are used (usually Lego Mindstorms ). The qualification for the world finals takes place via country finals in the respective member countries of the World Robot Olympiad Association. As a rule, the participants must first qualify in regional competitions for participation in the country finals.

Competition categories

In all competition categories, great importance is attached to the fact that the teams act independently and work without the professional support of their coach. Accordingly, the use of the solutions to the tasks offered on the Internet also violates the competition rules and generally against the principle of fairness.

The WRO Regular Category pitch, senior age group, in 2015.

Brick des Lego Mindstorms EV3

Regular Category

The Regular Category (international since 2004) is the most popular category of the WRO. The Regular Category is divided into three age groups (Elementary 6 to 12 years, Junior 13 to 15 years, Senior 16 to 19 years), the tasks of which increase in difficulty and fit the theme of the WRO season. The teams have the task of developing an autonomously acting robot (maximum ) that carries out given tasks within an annually changing course (size:) . As a rule, different course elements have to be picked up, transported and put down in the right places within a maximum of two minutes. Varying starting positions of the elements require complex robots and programs to complete or partially complete the subtasks. ${\displaystyle 25cm\times 25cm\times 25cm}$ ${\displaystyle 236,2cm\times 114,3cm}$

Only Lego materials (usually Lego Mindstorms and Lego Technic ) may be used to build the robots . The teams are allowed to build and program their robot before the actual competition, but they have to bring all of the individual parts to the competition. Within a construction phase of 120 minutes at the beginning of the competition, the teams reassemble their robot without photos or instructions. The teams' robots then compete in a total of four runs, between which further construction phases take place. The team with the two best runs overall (i.e. the highest number of points from completing the individual subtasks and, if there is a tie, a shorter time) wins the competition.

In order to ensure that the robots and their programming were developed independently by the teams in the run-up to the competition, one or two surprise tasks (small changes to tasks or rules) will be set on the competition days. These also challenge the creativity and spontaneity of the teams. Furthermore, the teams must be able to explain their robot and its programming to the referees.

In addition to the age groups mentioned, there has been a starter program (6 to 12 years) with simplified rules (e.g. no on-site assembly of the robot) and without qualification for a national or international final.

In the regular category image film , this competition category is explained in compact form within 2 minutes.

Stand of the German team “Deep Blue Seals” at the world finals in the Open Category in Doha.

Open Category

In the Open Category (international since 2004) the teams (age groups: Elementary 6 to 12 years, Junior 13 to 15 years, Senior 16 to 19 years) develop a robot model on the theme of the WRO season. The construction and design of the model and the team area ( ) are largely optional. Any building materials (e.g. wood or metal structures) and all types of controllers (e.g. Arduino , Raspberry Pi , fischertechnik etc.) can be used. Any software can also be programmed in the Open Category . On the day of the competition, the project will be evaluated by a jury in the form of a presentation. ${\displaystyle 2m\times 2m\times 2m}$

In the image film for the Open Category , this competition category is explained in compact form within 2 minutes.

Match in the football category at the Germany finals in the Friedrich-Ebert-Halle Ludwigshafen in June 2016.

Football Category

In the Football Category (international since 2010), two teams (8 to 19 years old) each with two robots compete against each other in direct competition. In this variant of robot football , just like in classic football , the robots try to play a ball (Ø ) into the opposing goal as often as possible . The team with the robot that scores the most goals within two halves of 5 minutes each wins the game. ${\displaystyle \,=7,5cm}$

The robots move completely autonomously on the playing field ( ) and use infrared sensors to detect the infrared cue ball. Compass sensors are also used for orientation and Bluetooth for communication . The robots may only consist of LEGO materials and sensors from HiTechnic and must adhere to upper limits for diameter, height and weight (Ø , ). The teams are allowed to build and test the robots before the competition, but on the day of the competition both robots have to be reassembled from individual parts within 120 minutes. ${\displaystyle 243cm\times 182cm}$ ${\displaystyle _{\max }=H_{\max }=22cm}$ ${\displaystyle m_{\max }=1kg}$

In the image film for the football category , this competition category is explained in compact form within 2 minutes.

The Football Category does not follow the yearly changing competition theme. Only minor adjustments to the rules are made here.

The Football Category - Starter has also been offered in Germany since 2018 . In contrast to the football category, this takes place on a smaller playing field ( ), with only one robot per team and only lasts 4 minutes per half. This category is not offered at international level, so that no qualification for the world finals can take place here. ${\displaystyle 236,2cm\times 114,3cm}$

Advanced Robotics Challenge

In the years from 2013 to 2020, the Advanced Robotics Challenge (short: ARC) category (for adolescents and young adults aged 17 to 25) was also held internationally . However, this category was never offered in German-speaking countries and will also be discontinued internationally in 2021.

Other categories

The WRO offers additional categories on a trial basis. In 2020, these are the Future Engineers / Self-driving vehicle challenge , the WeDo (Regular and Open) and the Virtual WRO (Regular Category) .

World Robot Olympiad Association

organization

The World Robot Olympiad has been organized on an international level since 2004 by the World Robot Olympiad Association Ltd. (short: WRO Association ) based in Singapore . The organization of the WRO is carried out at national level by partner organizations. Local partners can take over the organization for regional competitions.

Partner of the WRO Association are LEGO Education and Juniper Networks Inc. .

Principles

The WRO Association was founded with the following mission:

To bring together young people all over the world
to develop their creativity, design and problem solving skills
through challenging and educational robot competitions and activities.

This results in the following Guiding Principles and guiding principles:

WRO Guiding Principles	Guiding principles of the WRO
Teams are encouraged to learn and master new skills while having fun together.	Teams are encouraged to learn new skills and have fun taking part in the competition as a team
Coaches, mentors and parents are there to guide the teams, not to do the work for them.	Coaches and parents are supporters of the team and not the ones who do the work on the robot or the programming
Participating and learning are more important than winning.	Participating and gaining experience is more important than winning. It matters how much you learn!

The competition participants undertake to adhere to the Code of Ethics and the team guidelines:

It is not whether you win or lose, but how much you learn that counts.

It doesn't matter whether we win or lose, but how much we learn.

We are participating in a competition. We like to win. We want to learn. And we also want to have fun. We want to play fair. We design our own robot and we write our own software. It is not fair if someone else does that for us. We can only learn if we try things ourselves. Our coach can teach us things and guide us. And we can also get inspired by others. But our coach should not do the work for us. And we do not simply copy a robot or software from someone else. We use the examples we find to design our own robot and programming. Sometimes we fail and that is OK. Original ideas come from failing. Winning is nice but failing is part of our journey.

We are participants in a competition. We would like to win. We want to learn. And we want to have fun. We want to be fair. We develop our robots and write our own program. It's not fair for someone else to do it for us. We can only learn if we try out new things on our own. Our coach can teach us something and guide us. We can be inspired by others. Our coach shouldn't do the work for us. We don't copy robots or someone else's software. We use other examples to implement our own robot ideas. Sometimes we fail and that's fine. You can learn from mistakes and new ideas arise. It's nice to win, but failure is part of it sometimes.

Member countries

The WRO has grown steadily since it was founded in 2004 (4,418 teams from 14 countries), so that in 2019 a total of 28,911 teams from 76 member countries took part worldwide. As of May 2020, 84 national organizations are already members of the WRO:

region	Member countries (alphabetically). Founding members are in bold.	total
Africa:	Egypt (2011), Algeria (2020), Ghana (2012), Cameroon (2020), Kenya (2020), Morocco (2017), Nigeria (2011), South Africa (2010), Tunisia (2014)	9
America:	Bolivia (2008), Brazil (2014), Chile (2019), Costa Rica (2011), Ecuador (2017), El Salvador (2017), Honduras (2017), Jamaica (2018), Canada (2014), Colombia (2018 ), Mexico (2012), Nicaragua (2017), Panama (2004), Peru (2008), Puerto Rico (2017), United States (2014)	16
Asia and Australia:	Afghanistan (2018), Armenia (2015), Azerbaijan (2016), Australia (2010), Bangladesh (2020), Chinese Taipei (2004) , Hong Kong (2004) , India (2006), Indonesia (2004) , Iran (2006) , Japan (2004) , Cambodia (2018), Kazakhstan (2014), Kyrgyzstan (2018), Macau (2017), Malaysia (2004) , Myanmar (2018), Nepal (2018), Pakistan (2018), Philippines (2004) , Singapore (2004) , South Korea (2012), Tajikistan (2019), Thailand (2004) , Uzbekistan (2016), Vietnam (2013), People's Republic of China (2004)	27
Europe:	Albania (2018), Bulgaria (2018), Denmark (2006), Germany (2012), Estonia (2019), Greece (2009), Ireland (2019), Italy (2017), Netherlands (2018), North Macedonia (2018), Austria (2018), Romania (2014), Russia (2004) , Switzerland (2013), Serbia (2019), Slovakia (2019), Spain (2013), Turkey (2015), Ukraine (2009), Hungary (2014), United Kingdom (2019), Belarus (2014), Cyprus (2014)	23
Middle East:	Bahrain (2011), Jordan (2017), Qatar , Lebanon (2009), Oman (2010), Palestine (2014), Saudi Arabia (2016), Syria (2012), United Arab Emirates (2006)	9
total		84

Competitive development

World finals and topics

The World Finals of the WRO take place annually in a different large international city. The organizing national partner organization also develops the tasks for the WRO season. The table shows an overview of all competitions and the venues of the world finals:

year	country	city	WRO season theme	Remarks
2021	Germany	Dortmund	Publication planned for January 2021
2020	Canada	Montréal	Climate Squad Climate Group	Called off
2019	Hungary	Győr	Smart Cities Smart cities	2nd place Regular Senior 3rd place Regular Senior
2018	Thailand	Chiang Mai	Food Matters Food is important	2nd place Open Senior First participation by Austria.
2017	Costa Rica	San Jose	Sustainabots - Robots for Sustainability Robots for sustainability	2nd place Open Junior 2nd place Open Senior
2016	India	Delhi	Rap the Scrap Robots reduce, manage and recycle rubbish
2015	Qatar	Doha	Robot Explorers robot explorers	3rd place Regular Senior 3rd place Open Junior
2014	Russia	Sochi	Robots and space Robots in space
2013	Indonesia	Jakarta	World Heritage World Heritage	Switzerland's first participation.
2012	Malaysia	Kuala Lumpur	Robot Connecting People Robots connect people
2011	United Arab Emirates	Abu Dhabi	Robots for life improvement Robots make life better
2010	Philippines	Manila	Robots promote tourism Robots promote tourism
2009	South Korea	Pohang	Artist Robot Artistic robots
2008	Japan	Yokohama	Saving Global Environment Save the global environment
2007	Chinese Taipei	Taipei	Civil safety, security and emergency response Security, protection and emergency response
2006	People's Republic of China	Nanning	Humanoid human-like robots
2005	Thailand	Bangkok	Robot in Sports & Science Fiction Robots in Sports and Science Fiction
2004	Singapore	Singapore	Robots in Sports Robots in Sports

1. ↑ In addition to most of the national competitions, the 2020 world finals were also canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic .

WRO Friendship Invitationals

In addition to the world finals, WRO Friendship Invitationals (or World Adolescent Robotics Competition ) have also taken place since 2018 . The qualification takes place in Germany due to the placement in the Germany finals.

year	country	city	Remarks
2020	People's Republic of China	Lángfāng	called off
2020	Italy	Brescia	called off
2020	United States	Orlando (FL)	called off
2019	Denmark	Aarhus
2018	Philippines	Quezon City
2018	People's Republic of China	Guiyang	World Adolescent Robotics Competition

1. ↑ In addition to most of the national competitions, the 2020 Invitationals have also been canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic .

Germany

The participating teams must first qualify for the Germany finals through regional competitions. At the Germany finals, the best German teams will then receive their starting authorization for the world finals.

year	City of Germany finals	Number of regional competitions	Number of teams ( Regular Category )	Number of teams ( open category )	Number of teams ( football category )	total
2021	Freiburg in Breisgau
2020	Chemnitz (canceled)	37 (all canceled)				745
2019	Schwäbisch Gmünd	33	645	75	42	762
2018	Passau (together with the Austrian finals)	27	526	68	41	635
2017	Schweinfurt	28	471	90	23	584
2016	Ludwigshafen	26th	353	79	18th	450
2015	Dortmund	19th	289	75	16	380
2014	Dortmund	14th	247	25th	not offered	272
2013	Dortmund	8th	98	13	not offered	111
2012	Beckum (Junior), Menden (Senior)	-	32	not offered	not offered	32

The competition has been carried out in Germany since 2012 by the TECHNIK BEGEISTERT eV association. In recognition of his performance in organizing the competition, Markus Fleige (chairman of the association) was awarded the MINT ambassador prize in 2013 .

The offer of the WRO in Germany has been continuously expanded since then. At the beginning, only the junior and senior age groups were offered. The Open Category was introduced in 2013 . Since the 2014 competition season, all three age groups have been offered in both competition categories and a new, improved competition mode has been introduced: 4 competition runs are now run and the ranking is based on the two best runs of a team. In 2015, a pilot competition for robot soccer took place for the first time, which has been firmly established since 2016.

The competition is attracting increasing interest across Germany and is already being offered at numerous locations.

Austria

An Austrian WRO competition with qualification for the world finals has been taking place since summer 2018. This is organized by Techno-Z Braunau Technologiezentrum GmbH and currently (as of 2020) includes competitions in the regular categories of junior and senior.

year	City of Austria finals	Number of regional competitions (qualification)	Number of teams ( regular category ) ( elementary, junior, senior )	Number of teams ( open category )	Number of teams ( football category )	total
2020	Braunau am Inn (canceled)	0		not offered	not offered
2019	Schärding	0	20 (0, 14, 6)	not offered	not offered	20th
2018	Passau (together with the Germany finals)	0	15 (0, 9, 6)	not offered	not offered	15th

Switzerland

A WRO competition has been held in Aarburg every year since summer 2013 (canceled in 2020). The best teams in each case qualify for the world finals.

In 2020 only the regional competitions will be held. They take place as follows:

• Zurich: November 7th (Elementary and Junior)
• Rotkreuz / Zug: November 14th (Elementary and Junior)
• Brugg / Windisch: November 21 (Elementary and Junior)
• Burgdorf: November 21 (senior)

It has not yet been determined whether and in what form a "Swiss Champion" title will be awarded.

The TECHNIK BEGEISTERT eV association accompanies the Swiss organization IngCH - the official WRO National Organizer - as an operational partner and takes on some tasks that can be handled together.

See also

• First Lego League (FLL)

Web links

Commons : World Robot Olympiad  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

• WRO International - Links to all participating countries on the WRO International website
• WRO Germany
• WRO Austria
• WRO Switzerland

Individual evidence

1. ↑ World Robot Olympiad - robot competition with LEGO MINDSTORMS. Retrieved May 6, 2019 . 
2. ↑ World Robot Olympiad Image Film 2016 - Regular Category - published on Youtube on October 8, 2016
3. ↑ World Robot Olympiad Image Film 2016 - Open Category - published on Youtube on October 8, 2016
4. ↑ WRO 2019 - Football Category - Robot Soccer. In: worldrobotolympiad.de. Retrieved July 5, 2019 . 
5. ↑ World Robot Olympiad Image Film 2016 - Football Category - published on Youtube on October 8, 2016
6. ^ New Competition Formats: World Robot Olympiad Association. wro-association.org, accessed April 29, 2020 . 
7. ^ WRO Association Mission. In: wro-association.org. WRO Association, accessed May 5, 2020 . 
8. ↑ ^{a b} WRO Association Principles. In: wro-association.org. WRO Association, accessed May 5, 2020 . 
9. ↑ ^{a b} WRO Germany guiding principles. In: worldrobotolympiad.de. Technik Enteistert eV, accessed on May 5, 2020 . 
10. ^ World Robot Olympiad Association - Growth and Development. wro-association.org, accessed April 27, 2020 . 
11. ^ World Robot Olympiad Association - member countries. wro-association.org, accessed on May 6, 2020 . 
12. ↑ Previous Challenges: World Robot Olympiad Association. wro-association.org, accessed July 2, 2019 . 
13. ↑ The world finals of the World Robot Olympiad come to Dortmund. Technik Enteistert eV, accessed on April 3, 2020 . 
14. ↑ World Robot Olympiad coming to Montreal in 2020. roboticsandautomationnews.com, accessed July 2, 2019 . 
15. ↑ WRO International final 2020 canceled. roboticsandautomationnews.com, accessed April 3, 2020 . 
16. ↑ WRO International final 2019 scores. wro-association.org, accessed May 5, 2020 . 
17. ↑ WRO International final 2018 scores. wro-association.org, accessed May 5, 2020 . 
18. ↑ WRO International final 2017 scores. wro-association.org, accessed on May 6, 2020 . 
19. ↑ WRO International final 2015 Scores Regular. wro-association.org, accessed on May 6, 2020 . 
20. ↑ WRO International final 2015 Scores Open. wro-association.org, accessed on May 6, 2020 . 
21. ↑ ^{a b c d e f} Development of the WRO in Germany. In: worldrobotolympiad.de. Retrieved April 2, 2017 .  (requires JavaScript )
22. ^ WRO Germany finals Freiburg. In: worldrobotolympiad.de. Retrieved July 12, 2020 . 
23. ↑ ^{a b} Cancellation of the WRO season / start of online campaigns. In: worldrobotolympiad.de. Retrieved April 3, 2020 . 
24. ↑ Ambassador brochure 2013  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. ( PDF )  
25. ↑ Austria finals 2020 Braunau. (PDF) In: wko.at. Retrieved July 12, 2020 . 
26. ↑ Austria finals 2019 Schärding. (PDF) In: wko.at. Retrieved April 27, 2020 . 
27. ^ World Robot Olympiad Switzerland. Retrieved June 23, 2020 (Swiss Standard German).