The team of the Mostar Center for Education, Robotics, Innovation and Technology (CERIT) will represent Bosnia and Herzegovina at the upcoming International Robotics Olympiad “FIRST Global Challenge 2023”, which will be held in October in Singapore.
The team of talented roboticists consists of Ana Tomić, Amina Đuderija, Ilajda Šuta, Amar Pehilj and Kenan Nuhić, who attend Second High School Mostar, Fr. Grga Martić High School Mostar and Second High School Sarajevo, and work under the mentorship of Anes Hadžiomerović, Armin Đidelija and Lejla Nuhić.
In an interview for Fena, team mentor Anes Hadžiomerović said that CERIT was created in 2018 quite by accident.
“ I started working with robotics by accident, I ordered some components online and it was interesting to me. I pass on everything I learn to the students, and the very invitation to the International Robotics Olympiad is an honor and a challenge for us,” said Hadžiomerović.
Their work over the past five years has not gone unnoticed, as evidenced by numerous awards from international competitions.
“Two weeks ago, we had a visit from the vice dean of Yale University, professor Vincent Wilczynski, who noticed our work. I would also highlight the year 2021, when we won first place in the competition from 177 countries, and we are proud of that. Last year, we returned from the competition in Geneva with three awards, Outstanding mentor, Safety award and Social media award, and we made it to the finals, among ten countries out of 180, with our innovative solution for forest fire prevention, for a device that we designed and created ourselves and made. Last year we also attended an international robot competition in Turkey, from where we returned with two trophies and a 3D printer. We are preparing for Singapore in the tenth month, we hope to collect a lot of funds for the trip, we would like to thank UNDP, who provided us with tickets to the competition, and Denis Bećirović, a member of the BiH Presidency, for his help,” said the mentor of the CERIT team.
When asked about the expectations from the upcoming International Robotics Olympiad “FIRST Global Challenge 2023”, Hadžiomerović points out that they are high, but not unrealistic.
“If we didn’t expect something, we would be lying. We are going with the goal of winning one of the prizes, we hope to place well. The competition system itself is designed so that it does not depend, however, only on us, because there we have two alliances, three countries against the other three, and it is important what the robots of our colleagues with whom we are in the alliance are. There are agreements and development of tactics, improvement of robots where we previously helped colleagues from other countries. What is interesting is that the children in CERIT, who work on the robot, go through the complete STEM concept, everyone works on everything, every student works on every part of the robot,” he emphasized.
What also encourages creativity in children is the fact that there is no sketch or scheme to follow, but only the theme of the competition based on which the design and then the assembly of the robot is done.
“Each country to use the same robotic equipment for that year’s competition. There are 35 kilograms of parts, no one has instructions on how to make a robot and then when you come to the competition you have 180 different robots that have the task of doing the same task, and that’s when really innovative solutions come up. In Geneva, we won the award for innovation for the movement system,” explained Hadžiomerović.
It is also important that all teams have the same basic conditions.
“What is crucial, we must use only that robotic equipment and there must be no external parts. This gave us an advantage when we won the first place in 2021, because we cannot cope with the superpowers in robotics, but in this way we are in the same position as everyone in the world and this is where our children showed that we are more advanced than the rest of the world,” he asserted.
Hadžiomerović emphasized that robotics is an “expensive sport” and that financial conditions greatly complicate the work of CERIT.
“Dealing with robotics in BiH is very demanding, and the challenges we face and which represent an obstacle for us are of a financial nature, it is especially demanding to go to a competition like this. We work for up to eight hours on a robot, we hope that the political awareness towards robotics and the STEM concept will change, because robotics is the future whether we like it or not. We are aware that many will lose their jobs with the introduction of robotics, but new positions will also be created, especially for managing those robots, and then the pay will automatically be better,” he emphasized.
Unlike older generations, young people understand this and acquire new knowledge much more easily.
“Our schools in BiH have started, they are slowly keeping up with the times, but we have to go at a faster pace, the curriculum of the teaching programs, which are too extensive, must be changed. We need to follow what’s in in the world and base ourselves on that, which today is artificial intelligence and robotics. The spectrum is huge, and I would recommend young people to focus on artificial intelligence, because it is something that develops very quickly and is already the future,” believes Hadžiomerović.
He added that BiH society needs a long-term strategy of the education system.
“You can’t watch what will be now and for two years, political parties should move towards a common goal, regardless of whether they are from the left or right political spectrum, we should work on the development of BiH. The only way to resist the departure of young people from Bosnia and Herzegovina is to create jobs with adequate salaries, because what draws young people to other countries is, in essence, the salary. Soon we will be in a situation where we will not have professors of computer science, because that staff can earn more in programming jobs than they earn in schools,” concluded Hadžiomerović.
An important link in Bosnia and Herzegovina’s team is Armin Đidelija, a third-year student at the Faculty of Information Technologies in Mostar, who was a competitor himself, and is now the mentor of the BiH robotics team.
“I became interested in robotics in high school. Mathematics, physics, informatics, all of these are interwoven into robotics, and at the invitation of professor Anes, I joined the team, first as a competitor, and later as a mentor, a function I have been performing for the third year in a row,” said Đidelija.
According to him, the secret of the success of BiH team has innate resourcefulness:
“When we all have the same conditions, that’s when resourcefulness begins. Some big countries are used to better conditions, better equipment, bigger budgets, and when they “go down”, it’s different for them than for us because we “raised up”. Then they lack ideas, and they just come to us,” Fena reports.
Photo: Fena