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COMTRADE SUPPORTS THE FIRST ROBOT PROGRAMMING COMPETITION IN KRAGUJEVAC

Comtrade Group has expanded its widely known tradition of investing in education of youth, this time by supporting the First Robot Programming Contest in Serbia. Twelve teams from seven different Serbian cities (Beograd, Novi Sad, Niš, Kragujevac, Kraljevo, Zaječar and Kanjiža) participated in the contest which took place in Kragujevac on May 10.

Serbian high school students for the first time had the opportunity to compete in programming and testing 12 LEGO robots. The competition’s ultimate goal was to promote robotics as one of the most significant sciences in the 21st century.

“When I started to work 20 years ago, robots basically were only mechanic replacements for humans, and today they are becoming almost virtual beings with souls, if I may say so. Equipped with sensors and systems of defined behavior, they are able to recognize whether an object is alive or not as they pass by it. They also have the ability to learn about their surroundings. I’m pretty sure that we will have the opportunity in our lifetimes to see or even use robots as house assistants capable of, for instance, cleaning houses or baby-sitting. However, the most important is – these super smart machines will be constructed by people who are high school students today” said Srđan Atanasijević, the Delivery and Operations Director of Comtrade Group.

The contest was organized by Serbian Association of Secondary Schools of Mechanical Engineering and approved by Ministry of Trade, Tourism and Telecommunications. Comtrade Group, Microsoft and National Instruments supported the competition and announced their participation in the roundtable on promoting robotics and discussing the relationship between theory and practice.

Comtrade awarded teams that achieved the best results in the competition.