What Really Happened At That Robotics Competition You’ve Heard So Much About – NPR

The DAR Constitution Hall in Washington, D.C. was transformed into a competitive robotics arena, when teenagers from 157 countries gathered for the FIRST Global Challenge on July 17. Liam James Doyle/NPR hide caption

The DAR Constitution Hall in Washington, D.C. was transformed into a competitive robotics arena, when teenagers from 157 countries gathered for the FIRST Global Challenge on July 17.

This week a highly-anticipated robotics competition for 15- to 18-year-olds from 157 countries ended the way it began with controversy.

On Wednesday, the team from the violence-torn east African country of Burundi went missing. Well before the competition even began, the teams from Gambia and Afghanistan made headlines after the U.S. State Department denied them visas. Eventually, they were allowed to compete.

The team from Honduras tend to their robot creation in preparation for competition. Liam James Doyle/NPR hide caption

The team from Honduras tend to their robot creation in preparation for competition.

The drama marred an otherwise upbeat event focused on kids and robots.

Every team arrived with a robot in tow, each built with the exact same components, but designed, engineered and programmed differently. The goal: to gobble up and sort blue and orange plastic balls representing clean water and contaminated water.

For two days, teenagers rich and poor, male and female competed on a level playing field.

Pictured top-left going clockwise, Brendan Alinquant of Ireland, Andrea Tern of Mexico, Helder Mendonca of Mozambique, Anis Eljorni of Libya, Sarah Lockyer of Australia and twins Rinat and Shir Hadad of Israel. Liam James Doyle/NPR hide caption

Pictured top-left going clockwise, Brendan Alinquant of Ireland, Andrea Tern of Mexico, Helder Mendonca of Mozambique, Anis Eljorni of Libya, Sarah Lockyer of Australia and twins Rinat and Shir Hadad of Israel.

But there were reminders that in some parts of the world there is no such thing as a level playing field. And no team understood that better than Team Hope, made up of Syrian refugees who've fled to Lebanon.

As Fadil Harabi, the team's mentor, pointed out, "more than 90 percent of Syrian refugees in Lebanon don't have legal status. They don't have passports."

Getting passports for the team, Harabi said, turned out to be a lot more complicated than building a robot.

Competing teams created robots with the goal to gobble up and sort blue and orange plastic balls, which represented clean water and contaminated water, respectively. Liam James Doyle/NPR hide caption

Competing teams created robots with the goal to gobble up and sort blue and orange plastic balls, which represented clean water and contaminated water, respectively.

Team Hope's robot didn't do very well, but every time the Syrian kids competed, they attracted a crowd that would clap and chant, "Team Hope, Team Hope!"

For Colleen Johnson 18, a member of the all-girl U.S. team, that's what this event was all about.

"Everybody here is working together, loaning each other batteries, tools, helping each other fix programming issues to lift each other up," she said.

Still, the technology gap between poor and rich nations was evident. For team Honduras though, that gap is due to the lack of opportunity, not just the lack of resources.

Competitors from Team Hope, center in black, test the performance of their robot in a designated practice area. The unique team was comprised of Syrian refugees who had fled to Lebanon. Liam James Doyle/NPR hide caption

Competitors from Team Hope, center in black, test the performance of their robot in a designated practice area. The unique team was comprised of Syrian refugees who had fled to Lebanon.

"Honduras is a country where there aren't many opportunities," explained the team's leader, 17-year-old Daniel Marquez.

Marquez and his teammates all came from a tiny village, a seven-hour drive and world away from Tegucigalpa, the Honduran capital. Not a single member of the team had ever handled a remote control, let alone built a robot.

"But the world today demands that we understand technology," said Melissa Lemus, one of two girls on the Honduran team.

As the competition entered its third and final day, I checked in on Afghanistan's all-girl team. It seemed they had grown weary of the media frenzy around them.

Speaking through a translator, 15-year-old Lida Azizi said she was disappointed that her teammates' skills, and the robot they built, had gotten a lot less attention than the team's visa problems, which nearly kept them out of the competition.

The Afghan team's consolation prize: a medal for "courageous achievement," and knowing that they placed much higher than countries like Canada, the United Kingdom and the U.S.

Top honors went to Team Europe, Poland and Armenia.

The all-girls team of competitors from Afghanistan worked together to build their robot. The team faced adversity when the U.S. State Department initially denied them visas. Liam James Doyle/NPR hide caption

The all-girls team of competitors from Afghanistan worked together to build their robot. The team faced adversity when the U.S. State Department initially denied them visas.

The awards ceremony and closing ceremony felt like one big party, not so much a goodbye. It was a celebration with a hopeful message delivered by World Bank President Jim Yong Kim:

"You are the first generation in human history that can end extreme poverty in the world," Kim said. "And from what I saw of these robots, I know you can do it."

His message was not lost: Intelligence and talent with a moral vision have no race, nationality, religion or gender.

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What Really Happened At That Robotics Competition You've Heard So Much About - NPR