Seven students work together to win awards in two categories

A group of seven Indian students has bagged two awards at the first global robotics Olympiad where 157 countries participated.

The students, who hail from Mumbai, won gold in the Zhang Heng Engineering Design Award category and bronze in the Global Challenge category at the event organised by FIRST Global in Washington.

The Global Challenge award is presented to three teams that have achieved the most combined match points throughout the duration of the contest.

The Indian team was led by 15-year-old Rahesh, the youngest member of the group. The others in the team were Aadiv Shah, spokesperson; Harsh Bhatt, alliance strategist; Vatsin, alliance analyst; Adhyyan, robot tactician; Tejas, robot controller, and Raghav, robot driver.

“Absolutely thrilled that we were able to live up to our promise... We had a lot of fun at the FIRST Global Challenge 2017,” the group said on its Facebook page.

Afghan girls honoured

The three-day event capped weeks of tense moments for the all-girl team from Afghanistan, whose visas were denied twice by the U.S. State department. However due to a last-minute intervention by U.S. President Donald Trump, they were able to arrive over the weekend to participate in the competition.

Mexico City would host the competition next year.

The Afghan team won the Rajaa Cherkaoui El Moursli award for courageous achievement. Ivanka Trump met them at the competition venue in the morning.