RomeCup 2024: Luca Oliva speaks about the Robotic Arm Challenge.
Following last year’s pilot edition, at RomeCup 2024, the Robotic Arm Challenge was introduced as a true competition category. The objective is to share and promote the technical-creative skills of students in a learning and inclusive development environment. Teams can participate in the Single team challenge or in the Contest challenge with a university.
At the end of two days of competitions, the eight teams that have competed in increasingly difficult missions in various categories (collaborative roboticarm, smart arm, virtual competition, robotic arm makers, micro arm, single module) were all considered winners, because what’s important is not winning, but learning.
We asked Luca Oliva, a Professor at the Avogadro School in Vercelli, the founder and jack-of-all trades of the category, his impressions of the competition: "The feedback is excellent because team participated in all the categories. Participation was active and the level was medium-high, with many interesting and enjoyable projects. It was also an excellent way to compare notes: two days with other schools, exchanging of ideas, advice, and technological solutions. This type of event requires commitment and a lot of work. In the end, if everything has been done well, you can see the students’ satisfaction, their sense of fulfilment for the result achieved. And you see the implementation of a series of values such as sharing, research quality, increased knowledge, skills development ... a complex of linked values," replies Luca Oliva who coordinated all the work with the help of Matteo Lingua, Riccardo Accattino, Francesca Formaggio, and Francesco Dappiano.
And he adds: "We are very tired. We have made long journeys and there have been days of intense work." It's true, they all look very tired, with visible dark circles under their eyes, which, however, shine with passion and future.
We would like to especially thank Professor Luca Oliva, for the precious, tireless, and passionate care he dedicated to this new category, from the regulations to the organization of the competitions. The professor teaches Computer Science at the Istituto Superiore di Vercelli and Santhià, directed by Rossella Talice.
