Taguig City Mayor Laarni Cayetano on Monday commended a group of young students from public schools in the city who won two awards during the 2017 FIRA Roboworld Cup held in Taiwan last month.
The students—Madelle Diez, Philip Leonard Diez, John David Golenia, Pierre Alan Romir Pioquid, and Aron Sean Michael Pioquid, all of Sen. Renato Compañero Cayetano Memorial Science and Technology High School; and Samuel Tabernero of Eddie T. Reyes Integrated School—brought home gold and silver awards from the Cliffhanger and Mission Impossible categories, respectively.
“Rest assured that the local government will never get tired of assisting our Taguigeño students so in return, I’m asking you kids to continue to dream big and think big for our beloved city of Taguig,” said Cayetano.
The event, held at the National Kaohsiung First University of Science and Technology in Kaohsiung, Taiwan from Aug. 23 to 27, was the first international robotics contest the students ever joined.
Manny Palmero
The team took part in the “sumobot-like” competition called the Cliffhanger category, where they were tasked to build a robot that had to knock out its opponent out of the Dohyo or Cliffhanger ring without touching the obstacle placed at the center.
In the Mission Impossible category, the team was given three hours to build and program an 8.5 by 11.0 inches robot with the use of limited materials such as Styrofoam, popsicle sticks, BBQ sticks, glue stick, microcontrollers, DC motors, paper cups, distance and ultrasonic sensors.
The robot should then be able to float while following a line path placed underwater, and finally hook a treasure chest placed at the other side.
According to Pierre Pioquid, the whole team had to undergo a lengthy preparation that includes a series of seminars in designing, programming and rebuilding their robots, to compete in the international level.
“We didn’t expect to win especially when we learned what countries we were competing against. When we arrived [at the competition], we were intimidated and shocked with the other competitors’ robots, because ours only looked like a metal that had a motor and batteries,” Pioquid said.
According to the students, some of the opposing teams came from Taiwan, China, South Korea, Iran and Malaysia, and made robots created from boards that were built and customized by the foreign students themselves, things the Philippine team didn’t have the luxury to do, since they could only afford to buy ready-made boards for their machines.
Even then, Philip Diez said they decided to persevere and continue hoping for the best, since this was the first time that they had the honor to represent not only the city of Taguig, but the entire Philippines.
“Not letting other people who are supporting us down became another motivation, because they are the important factor behind our success — the reason why there is a Taguig Robotics Team,” Pierre said
Head Coach Sheryl Tabernero noted that the passion and interest of members of the Taguig Robotics Team — the very reasons they are part of the team in the first place — made them perform way better than they ever imagined.
She also expressed her heartfelt gratitude to the city government, which she said always supports the various academic endeavors of Taguigeño students.
In this case, the local government of Taguig shouldered all the expenses of the participants, from their plane tickets to their hotel accommodation in Taiwan.
Last month, 17 public school students won medals and were recognized in the 13th International Mathematics Contest held in Singapore, while another 52 were awarded for their achievements in the International Mathematics Open for Young Achievers held in Singapore from September 1 to 4.
The back-to-back achievements of Taguig students take place in an environment where education is given much premium. The Taguig government offers free education in its own Taguig City University.
In addition, students from the 36 public schools in the city receive free school supplies before the start of each school year.
In July, the allowances of scholars in the city’s scholarship programs — Lifeline Assistance for Neighbors In-need (LANI) and Taguig Learners’ Certificate (TLC) — also saw an increase.
Because of its big investment in education, Taguig City claimed the top spot in the National Achievement Test (NAT) for the elementary and high school levels for two consecutive years, in 2014 and 2015. In 2014, Taguig also ranked first in the Big Schools Cluster while in 2015, the city was the overall No. 1, both in the Grade 6 and 4th-year levels, in the National Capital Region.