This year's competition was held under the auspices of the President of the State, Shimon Peres, as part of the "Technology Cadets" program, and as part of the events of the 60th year of the independence of the State of Israel
The Microsoft FIRST Israel robotics competition ended yesterday, with Aviv High School from Ra'anana winning first place in the "Regional Chairman's Award" category. The competition was held this year under the auspices of the President of the State, Shimon Peres, as part of the "Technology Cadets of the Future" program, which was his initiative, and as part of the commemoration of the 60th year of the independence of the State of Israel, which stands for the strengthening of the children of Israel.
This year, 36 teams from all over the country participated in the competition, with each team being supported by a commercial company that provides financial support, and at the same time also receives technical support. FIRST activity in Israel is done in collaboration with the Ministry of Education, the Technion, and with the support of UMI, GM, the Kahn Foundation, the Rashi Foundation, the Municipality of Tel Aviv and other donors from abroad.
Along with Aviv High School, Yamin Ord Youth Village also won in the "Inspiration for Engineering" category, Eshkol Pis Emek Hafer in the ""Most Promising Starting Group" category, teams from Mashgav High School, Ort Shomron from Binyamina and Ironi H. from Tel Aviv in the "Regional Competition Winner" category. All these teams will fly to Atlanta, to participate in the FIRST World Finals, which will take place on April 17-19, 08. All the teams traveling to the world finals received a token of appreciation from Minister Ruhama Avraham Belila, the minister who liaises between the government and the Knesset and the chairman of the ministerial committee to mark 60 years of independence for the State of Israel.
Assaf Agmon, CEO of FIRST Israel, said that "this year the number of teams that took part in the competition increased again, and the increase was made possible thanks to partnerships with several major entities such as Microsoft Israel, the Kahn Foundation and the Rashi Foundation, as well as with other business companies. In addition to this, this year we won cooperation with the IDF, which included the introduction of the competition to schools belonging to military frameworks and the involvement of reservists in the project. We hope that next year we will be able to expand these partnerships even further, as well as increase the number of groups that will take part in FIRST activities, thus encouraging a larger number of youth to study technology and science."
The CEO of Microsoft Israel Danny Yamin congratulated the winners and said: "This is your first step in the world of advanced technology, a world where young people create big changes that affect the lives of all of us. I believe that the experience you had as participants in the project during the last months left a taste for more and a desire to be part of this fascinating world. We would love to see you join this world and be pioneers in the next generation of the world's most advanced technologies"
The Microsoft FIRST robotics competition challenges the groups of students and their instructors to build a robot and various applications in a period of six weeks, from a fixed set of parts. The teams build the robots from the parts, and place them in a series of competitions. In this year's challenge, the robot must pick up a ball with a diameter of two meters, put it on a beam and complete other tasks.
