The World Youth Innovation and Technology Exhibition in robotics that took place in Shanghai this year, held a big surprise for the 23-year-old Teacher from Greece and her team, that won first prize.
Diana Voutyrakou, a graduate of the Department of Electrical Engineering, is specializing in robotics-surgery. Also a teacher of Robotics, she is a co-founder of the NGO Unique Minds — an innovative organisation — which advises students and academics of science.
Yannis Papadopoulos and Jason Soomoglou are the two of Voutyrakou’s students who were assisted by her for more than two and a half years while building the model of a sustainable community, which won them first place at the exhibition.
Future plans for the two students include preparing for the Pan-Hellenic competitions and the world Olympiads.
The team was created in early 2017 in order to participate in the Pan-Hellenic Robotics Competition. Team GRID created and programmed a robotic community which is able to produce energy through renewable sources such as solar panels and wind turbine.
In addition, it is able to save energy through automation (sensors and Bluetooth system) convert energy such as kinetic and dynamic to electricity (i.e. in playground and in gym) and more importantly, share energy through households.
For the households team GRID used and analyzed real data from houses in Texas, that were provided by the Pecan Street company, for research purposes. With this project, the team earned the first award in the competition and represented Greece at the World Robot Olympiad in Costa Rica in November 2017. There, for the first time, team GRID won an Olympic Distinction, taking the seventh place worldwide and the second in Europe.
This year, the GRID team became the first Greek team to ever be accepted in representing Greece at the International Youth Innovation and Technology Expo in Shanghai.
Source: greece.greekreporter.com