2013 WER Tournament was held in Liuzhou city, China. Started from Nov. 23th, the two-day tournament attracted over 1,000 students of 300 more teams from 18 provinces and municipalities.
Honored guests including government staff and university professors were present for the opening ceremony for this robotics event, such as Xing Meng, deputy director of Youth Science and Technology Center of China Association of Science and Technology, Xiaofu Wang, deputy director of National Center for Educational Technology, Chunhua Liang, vice chairman of the Communist Party of Guangxi Association of Science and Technology, Yaoguang Jiao, deputy mayor of Liuzhou City, Minguo Zhao, professor of Tsinghua University, etc. After the opening ceremony, they visited the contest and highly praised the mode of WER.
Contest theme of WER 2013 is “Intelligent Robot Housekeeper”. Each team should build a series of robots creatively and then finish all tasks specified, such as “Garbage disposal”, “Chandelier repairing”, etc. Meanwhile, each team can also apply for additional tasks (additional scores available) which are released just 2 hours before the official competition. The formal competition for each team includes 3 rounds. Final scores are determined by scores got in each round (round 1+round 2+round 3). The two-day intense competition includes two events: WER and WER-J. There are 18 awards available for WER & WER-J, and separated into Primary-school level, middle-school level and high-school level, each level with three awards (gold, silver, and bronze).
“The contest held here is different from previous ones. I find more teams joined compared with other seasons. I also find that we have players of ethnic minorities in their traditional costumes here”, executive member from the Asian Division of the Federation of World Educational Robot, Jie Lu said at the closing ceremony. He also highly praised players for their serious attitude and persistence in the contest. Meanwhile, Mr Lu showed his respect to teachers for their dedication and delivered the message that the federation of WER will consistently promote and develop this robotics contest to be the most authoritative and most influential robotics event globally. It is predicted that the 2014 WER International Tournament is going to be held in USA, while the Liuzhou tournament works as the qualification trials for the International Tournament. Winners in Liuzhou Tournament will get the priority to attend international tournament and compete with players from other countries.
Show at the opening ceremony—my future is not just a dream
Opening ceremony starts
Xing Meng, deputy director of Youth Science and Technology Center of China Association for Science and Technology, doing the opening address
Xiaowu Wang, vice chairman of National Center for Educational Technology, announcing the start of the opening ceremony
Game about to start
I made it
Children of ethnic minorities in the game
Hurry up, we got little time left
Media interview
Not easy to be a champion
LOL. Look at me！