On June 9, the National Children’s Library hosted the second edition of the Library Robo League contest, as part of the Novateca Modern Library Development Fund initiative. Following the successful contest held in November 2017, 11 library robotics teams joined the competition to challenge their programming skills and cheer for their robots.

“We, at the National Children’s Library, are pleased to host this competition for the second time and witness the enthusiasm, the joy and the great team spirit brought up by all these amazing kids,” mentioned Claudia Balaban, Director of the National Children’s Library. “Organizing these events helps us improve our collaboration with the entire network of library robo teams and ensure a proper coordination of the robotics initiative in all public libraries.”

More than 100 teenagers (of which 35% girls) and robo trainers attended the competition, addressing drinking water resource issues and displaying impressive programming skills at the `robots in action` missions. The 2018 edition of the Library Robo League applied the national FIRST Lego League contest criteria, and offered participants a better perspective on how national and international robotics contests take place. At the same time, this new edition required additional involvement and teambuilding skills from the robo team members, who had to present a community project on Hydrodynamics based on a thorough research and collaboration with organizations and local actors in charge of water management.

“I was highly impressed with the research process conducted by all the robotics teams and their civic engagement and collaboration with community members,” noticed Svetlana Potlog, a jury member and trainer at FabLab Ungheni. “In addition to the concepts presented, the teams showcased amazing devices to be applied in order to purify residual waters.”

One of the sensations and main achievements of this edition was the participation of the Causeni Raion Public Library robo team members as referees at the technical evaluation category. The ‘SkyNet’ robo team members, who achieved great performances at various national and international robotics contests, provided technical consultancy and helped the participating teams with fixing programming issues encountered while designing their robots.

“This contest was a new experience for our robotics team that had the privilege to take an active part in the organization of this event and much more, experience the role of technical judges, as the case of some of our team members,” highlighted Liuba Osipov, Director of the Causeni Raion Public Library.

The event was another great success that gathered young programmers on a level playing field in order to test their programming and teambuilding skills, and create a cheerful and friendly atmosphere for teams to bond and communicate with each other.

At the end of the competition, each team member went home with a medal, while the leading teams received Library Robo League trophies and special gifts from the National Children’s Library:

• Rezina Raion Public Library senior and junior robo teams - winners of the ‘Robot in mission’ trophy. The ‘Just Do It’ and ‘Olimpicus’ teams proved great programming skills at building, testing and programming the robots, and earned the highest scores at this category.
• Falesti Raion Public Library robo team - winners of the ‘Best project’ trophy. The ‘Minionii’ robo team’s project impressed the judges with the purifying residual waters device that uses hydrogen as fuel.
• Galesti Public Library robo team – winners of the ‘Robot Mechanics’ trophy. The ‘Robokraft’ team displayed remarkable skills at designing and building a robust and versatile robot.
• Izbiste Public Library robo team – winners of the ‘Fundamental values’ trophy. The ‘Funtastic’ team demonstrated impressive cooperation skills between team members and friendliness towards fellow teams.
• ‘SkyNet’ Causeni Raion Public Library robo team – received a special award from the National Children’s Library for facilitating the organization of the Library Robo League 2018.

To address the increasing demand in science and engineering education, Novateca supports Robotics Clubs at National Children’s Library and the public libraries from Ialoveni, Cricova, Galesti, Molovata Noua, Rascova, Falesti, Causeni, Rezina, Telenesti, Izbiste, Drujba, Voinova, Ungheni, Cahul, Drochia, Orhei, Glodeni, Municipal Library “B.P. Hasdeu” and equipped them with public access Robotics kits. Since the opening of the Robo Clubs in the fall of 2016, more than 500 children and youth have been trained in coding and programming robots at their public libraries.