Three boys from Kuwait took Pittsburgh by storm this week and, no, it’s not a new band.
The young, high school Palestinians won a week in Pittsburgh as the champions in first international Carnegie Mellon Botball in Qatar competition, beating 17 other teams from Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, and Kuwait in May.
They took a whirlwind tour of the city last week, from The Robotics Institute and the Entertainment Technology Center to a Pirates game, an incline ride, Mineo’s Pizza and mall shopping. One of the highlights? A summer rainstorm.
“This is totally different from anything they’ve ever seen before,” explains Hazam Hany El Beltagy, their science teacher from the Al RU’YA Bilingual School in Kuwait. “The competition taught them a new branch of science not found in the Gulf area. It’s the first time they’ve seen skyscrapers and mountains. Kuwait is so small and Pittsburgh is so big. “
“And it doesn’t have 120 degree weather,” chimes in Mohamed Al Gondob, 14.
Botball teams are equipped with a Lego Mindstorm robot and basic instructions on how to get started. The students spend long hours programming the robot to move autonomously through a course, earning points through a maze of difficult situations. CM in Qatar hopes to bring it to the entire Persian Gulf region next year.
All three boys, Majdi Yousef Sulaiman, 16, Anas Omar Al Badawi, 16, and Mohamed, hope to apply to CMU and study robotics one day.
Writer: Deb Smit
Source: Andy Zrimsek, Carnegie Mellon in Qatar
Image courtesy of CMU