28 February 2014

Volnoe Delo Oleg Deripaska Foundation, one of Russia’s largest private charity funds and Russia's Federal Agency on Youth Affairs, Rosmolodezh opened on Friday the 6th All-Russian Youth Robotic Festival RoboFest.

The competition is held in 22 disciplines involving 2600 schoolchildren and students representing 600 teams from 47 Russian regions and four countries: Serbia, Romania, Kazakhstan and Latvia. It is the second RoboFest for foreign teams. Winners of RoboFest-2014 will participate in international robotics contests in the United States, European and Asian counties.

The festival aims to promote the development of creative skills of a future Russian technical elite, encourage youth engineering initiatives and stimulate interest to the engineering professions and tech entrepreneurship.

RoboFest’s inaugural event was held in Moscow’s International Exhibition Centre Crocus Expo on Friday. The site was open for visitors and fans.

Teams competed in the junior, senior and professional divisions. As well as participation RoboFest also features presentations by IT companies, photo exhibitions, roundtables with state officials, IT companies and technical universities.

The festival program includes competitions in mobile robotics by Worldskills International, interactive workshops “Live Physics”, “Scientific Museum”, “Planetarium”, “Arduino Educational Solutions”, “Fischertechnik Industrial Automotization” as well as speed competitions in soldering and robot assembly.

Massachusetts-based company PTC, one of the partners of RoboFest, staged a competition on 3D engineering solutions. LEGO, a manufacturer of the world’s famous interlocking toy bricks, also entertained young visitors and organized workshops with professional LEGO designers.

The festival is organized by Volnoe Delo Oleg Deripaska Foundation, supported by Russia's Federal Agency on Youth Affairs, Rosmolodezh, Russian Ministry of Education, GAZ Group and En+ (parts of Russia’s largest diversified industrial group Basic Element), Agency for Strategic Initiatives, Worldskills Russia, LEGO’s Educational Programmes department, National Instruments, Autodesk and other partners.