Mexican Girl Power: they seek to conquer the world with their robots

1038

Six young people will represent Mexico in the VEX Robotics World Championship, a robotics contest in which they will face a particular quality: they are the only team composed only of women in their category.

During the last week and a half of this month, the city of Louisville, Kentucky, in the northeastern United States, will be transformed, as every year, into a battlefield of the future, in which more than 1,400 robots from , practically, everyone.

All this will happen as part of the 2019 edition of VEX Robotics World Championship, a tournament that brings together hundreds of students from more than 40 countries of the world, from different educational levels, interested in robotics.

Mexico will be part of this battle being represented by different students of basic, middle and higher level, among which will be present a group of six young people from Saltillo, Coahuila, who will face in the championship a peculiar quality: They will be the only integrated team only by women who will participate in the category of universities.

The project by Gabriela Lagunas, Mónicaika Flores, Martha Hernández, Mariel Gómez, Daniela Banda and Alejandra Cavazos, students of Tecnológico de Monterrey, began at the beginning of this year, after the young women decided to come together in order to share their passion for this topic.

And it was precisely this pleasure that led them to consider the possibility of building their own robot, with the aim of starting to participate in competitions. Things went well for them, since they managed to get to participate in the VEX National Championship, a robotics contest that brings together students from all over the country.

Things were not only there, since in this tournament the coahuilenses got, after winning the judges’ award, their pass to the global Kentucky competition, which will be held from the 24th to the 30th.

Win and inspire

It has been just a few months since the girls decided to take this path, however, they explain, have their sights set on winning the championship in which they will participate in the coming days.

“We are very motivated by the competition that comes and we really believe that we have the ability to win, it is not easy to do but we have confidence in the knowledge we have,” they explain in an interview.

But for them to compete and seek victory is not the only important thing, but, they expose, after realizing that they will be the only team conformed only by women within the category of competing universities their methane has not been left only in that.

“We are excited by the fact that this team of ours that we are promoting can motivate more young people to become involved in robotics issues, we would like to not be the only ones in this, but that more and more women participate and win”, they point out.

The issue is important especially if one takes into account the importance of the so-called STEM careers for the future, which involve the areas of science, technology, engineering and mathematics, and on which the majority of job opportunities will be based. future.

Currently, according to data from The Robotics Education and Competition (REC), only 24% of the work positions related to STEM are occupied by women, so specialists say it is important to increase this percentage.

“The United States goes much further on STEM issues, however, in Mexico we go a little slower, so we would like to push for more women interested in participating, little by little we will break with the stereotypes that exist” , they comment.

Source: Forbes

The Mazatlan Post