A look at the robotics + AI scene in Egypt

Robotics and AI are picking up steam in Egypt — although funding and accessibility issues are holding students back: With artificial intelligence (AI) and robots becoming increasingly widespread and capable of performing simple and complex tasks — from presenting a newscast to playing soccer, or even leading an orchestra — Egypt is catching up. Students across different age groups have increasingly been participating in local and international competitions, and robotics is starting to be taught at schools, universities, and academies. However, the growth of the AI and robotics space in Egypt is being held back by several factors, according to insiders Enterprise spoke with.

Egyptian students have been cracking into more international robotics competitions: Just this year, two school students, Omar Saad and Rodina El Shenawy, earned first place in the annual international robotics championship in Oradea, Romania, coming out on top in the mega sumo and line following competitions. Saad and El Shenawy’s success came just a few months before three students from public technical schools also landed in first place in international robot competition Robocup Junior’s rescue maze challenge. The students outperformed 3k competitors and 400 teams participating in the competition in Thailand.

Competitions on the local level act as gateways to competing internationally: There are a variety of robotics competitions in Egypt for different age groups, some of which don’t extend beyond the local context, while others act as qualifiers for international competitions. Those qualifying types of competitions are usually held a few months before the main international competition so the qualified finalists are able to prepare themselves for travel. The three most important local competitions that lead up to global editions are the World Robot Olympiad competition(WRO), Robocup Junior Egypt, and the First Lego League (FLL).

What the competitions entail: Each year, local competitions introduce a specific challenge for contestants to come up with an applicable solution for real-world problems. WRO is a global competition that gathers more than 38k participants from 85 countries around the world and is open for students aged from 8-9 years old. The competition is divided into four categories: Robomission, robosports, future innovators, and engineers. FLL is another global competition, although this is STEM-based and accepts a wider range of ages, starting from four-year-olds through to 16-year-olds. The competition is divided into three programs for the different age groups: Discover for those aged 4-6, Explore for the 6-10 age group, and Challenge for 9-16-year-olds. Meanwhile, RoboCup Junior is a division of RoboCup for young students up to 19 years of age, with three competition categories: Rescue, soccer, and on-stage.

SOUND SMART- How is STEM education related to robotics? STEM(Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) education is a way of teaching science and math in a creative manner by connecting complicated concepts to art and real life applications, based on questioning and discovering what you’re studying. Robotics is one of the things that are taught using STEM to discover more about the movements of robots, what they can achieve, and how they can be used and applied in real-life daily contexts.

When can a student start learning robotics? “A student can start at an early age starting from four years old, he/she can use primitive robot kits that only include the hardware to develop their sensory skills and creative thinking,” Omar Sayed, a MENA Accreditation Provider of STEM (LinkedIn) told Enterprise. Students can start dabbling in both the hardware and software of the robot from as early as six years old, which can help them learn how to program a robot to make simple movements and understand how its sensors work.

Where is robotics taught in Egypt’s classrooms? Academies such as Mawaheb, Big Hero Robotics, Robokids, TechAcademics, the Stem Hub, iSchool are among the most widely-known providers of robotics and programming courses. Besides teaching the courses, they also aid students in joining local and international competitions. The top notch schools such as Elite International Schools, IVY International Schools, Salah El Din International School and others are usually the ones that apply STEM within their curricula and teach robotics. There are other national and experimental schools that teach robotics but they are not a big number as Sayed highlighted.

What are the tools used to learn robotics? Learning how to build robot hardware and software requires specific robot kits, which can be either ready-made or open platform, Mawaheb Academy Manager Mohamed Ibrahim told us. The open platform kits encourage more creativity and are used mostly by advanced level students, since they require different components to be bought individually and gathered to design your own robot. The most well-known open platform kit providers are Aurdino and Raspberry Pi.

Ready-made educational kits can take many different forms, from simple hardware with no coding kits, to small programmable kits that students can code themselves, to more complicated kits that require a higher level of interaction. There are a variety of ready-made kits, the most well-known of which are the Lego and VEX educational kits.

A kit is usually tailored to fit the skill set and learning stage of a specific age group: For kids aged 4-6 taking their first steps in robotics, the Lego STEAM Park kit helps them learn about the “gears, motion, measurement, and solving problems in a fun and engaging way.” Moving up the age brackets to 7-9 years, we start to get a glimpse into sensors and coding using the WeDo robot or the LEGO Education SPIKE Prime Expansion set. From 10-13 years, kids can use the Lego Robot Inventor to build five different designs with some coding involved. Moving to a more advanced level from 14-18 years, the EV3 Robot sees kids using more complex skills to build a robot that can walk, talk, and process information.

What are the factors that are holding students back in Egypt? A confluence of factors, including a lack of funding and sponsors, difficulties securing robot kits, and a dearth of teaching capacity are among the biggest issues students pursuing robotics face in advancing their craft, Robocup Juniors competition founder Islam Wageed told us. Students who are qualified for international competitions don’t always have the ability to self-finance their expenses, and often need to resort to companies or NGOs for support, Wageed said. However, if students are unable to secure funding from these organizations, they often find themselves unable to participate in international competitions. Additionally, financial hurdles can act as a massive barrier to entry when it comes to getting your hands on a robot kit, considering the ready-made kits are expensive (since they’re mostly imported) — one kit can set you back as much as USD 20k, Wageed said. Even for those who are able and willing to spend that much money, the kits aren’t necessarily always accessible considering Lego and Vex don’t have local vendors here. Finally, there remains no specialized entity dedicated to training STEM teachers, creating a chronic shortage of these instructors.