Lababuyo in action. Larry Labuyo, the Philippine team’s entry in the FIRST Robotics Competition in Hawaii dumping a load of “moon rocks” in the trailer of its opponent robot.

Twenty junior high school students of the Philippine Science High School (PSHS) - Diliman,
who compose the Philippine Robotics Team, bagged two awards at the 2009 FIRST Robotics
Competition (FRC) in Hawaii, earning them a ticket to Atlanta, Georgia for the Robotics world championship on April 16 to 18.

FIirst stands for For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology.

Called Team Lagablab, the RP team won against six other high school teams from the US and is the sole participant from the Southeast Asia region. The team is composed of 20 high school students taking up Robotics as an elective.

Robotics as a subject is being piloted at the PSHS main campus in Diliman. It is a field of science and engineering concerned with creating robots and devices that can move or react to sensory input and it falls under the Physics subject in high school. Robotics is one of the main research thrusts of the national government under the National Science and Technology Plan.

The team won the Highest Rookie Seed Award, which is given to the neophyte team that gets the highest seed at the conclusion of the qualifying rounds; and the Rookie All-Star Award, which is given to a new team composed of exemplary young students but who possess strong partnership effort and implementing the mission of FIRST to inspire students to learn more about science and technology.
Bagging the Rookie All-Star Award earned the Philippine team the ticket to the Robotics finals in Atlanta, Georgia.

The Philippine robot, dubbed “Larry Labuyo,” also ranked 17th out of 33 competing teams. Robots used in the competition used a special kind of wheel rolling over regolith, a material which is almost frictionless.

Other countries that participated in the competition include the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Germany, Mexico, Turkey, Israel, Brazil and Chile.

Way to go!

Science Education Institute director Dr. Ester Ogena said the Philippine team’s success in the competition in robotics tilt shows the exemplary performance of Filipinos in the field of Robotics, adding
that the competition is an avenue to entice young students to venture in Robotics careers in the future.

“We want our students to have the motivation and inspiration to become scientists and engineers by making them experience what it is like to be in the real world. We hope that through the FRC we would be able to give them an insight to the scientific community,” she said.

Dr. Elmer Dadios, one of the team’s mentors, said that among the major rewards from the competition are scholarships in large universities in the US to be sponsored by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.