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And this is Story in the Story.
Young Chinese students have recently grown attracted to building and programming robots.
China has over 50,000 elementary school students enrolled in robotics classes.
The program, Robots Are Very Educational, otherwise known as RoboRAVE , is an international competition where over 2,000 elementary school students from around the world go head to head to see who has the best robot design.
South China's Guangzhou in Guangdong Province will host this year's RoboRAVE competition and is already expecting elementary students from 20 different countries.
As the company's motto says, “today's play, tomorrow's pay,” right now, China's young robotics students could very well be tomorrow’s industry leaders.
Today's Story in the Story looks at how elementary school students have discovered the world of robotics, a subject that is now available to children at schools across the country.
Students learn how to design, build, program and test robots to perform a variety of tasks at a training course offered by China's IT education provider Tarena International. (Photo: China Daily)
Han Qianhao, a 10-year-old elementary school student, began learning about robotics three years ago when she was studying at an international school in Beijing.
Before that, Qianhao had already been involved in dancing and playing the piano for years. However, she found that what she gained from learning robotics is quite different from pursuing other hobbies.
"It's very challenging," said Qianhao, and added, "Even though we've tested the reliability of our robots many times, they can still fail during the competition. Hence, we have to take every precaution to deal with potential problems that might arise."
Her mother said it's impossible for a veteran dancer to get a zero in a dance competition, even if he or she fails to bring their full talent to bear. An awkward, zero-point situation is more likely to occur with a veteran robotics contestant because sometimes the environmental uncertainties can harm the performance of the robot.
"She needs to be mentally and emotionally strong enough to accept the fact that all her efforts might lead to naught in a robotics competition and cope with all these game-based engineering challenges," Qianhao's mother said.
Her mother also pointed out that her daughter is growing to be a more considerate and decisive player in the field.
"We formed a team and built our project together, where I was able to learn from the others and their strong points via communication and collaboration," Qianhao said.
Her team was recently crowned "the robot performance" champion of the official FIRST Lego League Lebanon International Open, another global robotics competition.
Han Qianhao (middle), Angelina Zeng (first from left) and their teammates burst into happiness after winning the "robot performance" championship at a recent competition in Lebanon. (Photo: China Daily)
To prepare for the upcoming RoboRAVE in Guangzhou, Xie, a Chinese Canadian adjunct engineering professor runs a 10-day course to teach the students how to improve the reliability and consistency of their robots' performance.
Xie holds true to the idea that by learning programming and coding, children will nurture their logical thinking skills and learn real-life engineering principles, all while developing a team spirit and unleashing their imagination, which will help create their own innovative solutions.
Xie said his 14-year-old son, Zachary, was once a game addict, but rather than sitting like a zombie, staring at a blinking screen, he now knows how to program a video game after he took an interest in programming and robotics.
Zachary said, "To play a video game, you really don't learn much unless it's a strategy game.
"However, for robotics, you have to solve different problems; it could be a fault in the mechanical design or a bug in the programming,” he said.
Zachary works as his father's assistant, who coaches Chinese teachers and students on the training course and he says that he wants to create a hands-on STEM experience for them.
Regarding his future career, Zachary said, " I'm pretty sure I will pursue my career in one of the STEM fields. These robot competitions would be extremely beneficial for me.”
His 11-year old teammate, Angelina Zeng, agrees, adding that after becoming obsessed with robotics, she wishes to seek a career which combines other fields like business and design.
(Produced by Nancy Yan Xu, Lance Crayon, Brian Lowe and Paris Yelu Xu. Music by: bensound.com. Text from China Daily.)