OREANDA-NEWS. In the 2015 FIRST® (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) Robotics Competition Tournament of Duel Down Under last week, the two teams sponsored by Ford – IC Robotic, a home school team from Melbourne, Australia and Master Machinist from the High School Affiliated to Nanjing Normal University Jiangning Campus in China - both made it to the finals. As part of a 3-team alliance, they took the first two places.   

The annual FIRST® Robotics Competition launched in 1992 is intended to inspire young people aged 15 to 18 to be innovative science and technology leaders, by engaging them in exciting mentor-based programs that build science, engineering and technology skills. The two teams from Melbourne and Nanjing are both supported by the Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) program, a Ford initiative to provide financial and technical assistance to the young students who have showed their interests or potentials in those areas.  

“Ford strives for great products and excellent business, in the meantime works very hard to make the world a better place,” said Sean Newell, Learning & Development Manager Product Development, Ford Asia Pacific. “The cooperation with the students in Melbourne and Nanjing is a great example how Ford is committed to nurturing young talents by inspiring innovations and developing their skills in STEM, which are the core qualifications of the engineers that the society nowadays is craving for.”

At Barker College of Sydney, 23 teams from four countries in Asia Pacific competed to test the performance of their robots over three days of the intensive tournament under the theme “Recycle Rush”.

As a veteran of this tournament with two more years of experience, IC Robotic team from Melbourne showed their strength and was ranked second at the end of the qualification matches. There is no doubt the alliance of this team took the crown in the final competition.

The debut of the other Ford team, Master Machinist, from the High School Affiliated to Nanjing Normal University Jiangning Campus demonstrated huge progress as a rookie team in the 3-day tournament. Whilst they finished ninth in the qualification matches, they played a key role to their alliance’s success of entering the final session, and earned the Rookie All Star Award.

A remarkable fact is that the six students from Master Machinist, one of the three Chinese teams have accomplished this first international contest with their first-ever robot. They started with some vague ideas and curiosity in engineering technology, which coincides with the vision of Ford STEM program to create a pipeline for future engineering talents.

To make the students’ Robotic dream come true, Ford helped the school build a FRC laboratory, under a donation of RMB 100,000 for equipment and components. The volunteering engineers from Ford Nanjing Research and Engineering Center adjacent to the school provided coaches to the students every week in their spare time, by explaining the machinery structures, demonstrating how to use the assembly tools, inspiring the mentality of designing, and helping them improve after repeatedly failures, thus came the completion of a good performing robot by the students within two months and their final success in Sydney.