After much rigorous work, planning, and anticipation, junior William Wu and his robotics team, FireWatch, earned second place in the World Robot Olympiad (WRO) Open Championship Final.
Held in Puerto Rico, Wu and his team represented the USA in the world competition. It all started with a spark of an idea and a theme based on “Earth Allies,” as he and the two others in his team, Arcadia High School students Evan Sun and Emily Zhang, wasted no time getting straight to the challenging task ahead of them. Their mission: to develop an innovative solution for the earth with a real-world impact.
Wu and his team decided to tackle the increasingly prominent issue of wildfires. Using just Raspberry Pi (a small, affordable computer chip made by the Raspberry Pi Foundation), Wu and his teammates wrote a code to train an AI-model to develop a system of drones designed to scout and detect early-stage fires in remote areas. The team’s goal is for these drones to help prevent and mitigate land and property loss.
“So this year’s theme was Earth Allies, which was protecting the earth, so what we thought was fires,” said Wu. “There’s not a lot going on to prevent them so, we researched into it and we found out that drones would be a good way to scout for fires, but it would waste a lot of manpower, so that’s when we thought of AI drones and no one has done it.”
According to Wu, the competition and judging process was intense. The event consisted of three packed days of setting up, practicing presentation, planning the layout, and going through three judging sessions. After the first three judging sessions, there was one final one to top it all off, and the award ceremony.
“So when I first got there it was very stressful because we got there two days before the competition and both of those days we stayed in the hotel everyday practicing,” said Wu.
Once the competition began, Wu and his teammates has a set amount of time to stand out from the other competitors from around the world.
“The first day was basically set up, so we grabbed all our stuff and we set up our booth; and the American organizer came to us and we presented it to them,” said Wu. “And then the second and third day were judging. Working every day [was often tiring at times], as sometimes we work until [midnight] every day, and it’s kinda tough balancing that with school, but it’s also rewarding.”
As described on the WRO’s website, “students create their own innovative intelligent robotics solution relating to the current theme of the season. Judges will not only grade the robot solution but will also look at aspects of innovation and entrepreneurship.”
Caught between a mix of ensuring a winning spot and making sure the project was relevant, the team of three competed in the Senior Future Innovators category. Wu and his teammates’ second-place achievement made history by earning the highest spot the US has ever been awarded within that category.
This was Wu’s third time competing in the WRO. As an experienced competitor, Wu approached this year’s event with experience and confidence knowing this wasn’t anything relatively new to him. As a freshman last year, Wu and RCHS student Jack Xu earned third place in the 2023 competition, which was held in Denmark.
Team USA consisting of William W. and his team standing on the podium for their second place win. Credit to William W.
“So the first competition I did was in 2022, it was my first year of doing it. We didn’t get a good score, but I still liked it so I did it again the next year after that,” said Wu. “Like last year, we placed third in Denmark. I definitely had experience; I took some parts from previous competitions and incorporated it into this year’s competition.”
Wu said that he participates in these worldwide competitions because he has a passion for robotics.
“I have loved participating in this competition for three years already,” Wu said. I enjoy robotics. I do this competition because I enjoy it. I want to make an impact.”
According to Wu, he has had an in the world of robotics since he was younger. Wu expressed his passion for the field of robotics primarily through his enjoyment of dealing with math and incorporating it into engineering practices.
“Since the beginning, I was always a fan of math so then robotics had something to do with that. So, I found that pretty interesting too. I liked in the beginning how it kept promoting new challenges, and I learned a lot of things about it,” said Wu. It was also an enticing way to practice his hobbies: “It was a combination of both [winning and gaining experience], and it’s also a learning process because what we did was design something new not knowing even if it would work or not and we tried our best to make everything happen.”
Beyond all of the technical challenges that come along with robotics, the competition provided Wu and other competitors with a unique opportunity to demonstrate their understanding of robotics and explore new places in the world.
“The funnest part was definitely the actual competition, but besides competing we also did a friendship exchange where we got to meet people from a lot of other countries,” Wu said. “I also got to explore Puerto Rico; after the competition, we went kayaking.”
When asked about what the future may hold for him, Wu said he’ll definitely want to pursue a profession in the STEM community.
“I’m more into innovation and stuff like that, Wu said. “So my future career choice would probably be an engineer, something along the lines of that making something that would benefit others.”
