The time has finally come for the annual MakeX Spark Competition, the highly anticipated robotics competition organised by Polaris Network and hosted by MakeX Robotics in Singapore. With the pandemic still rife in Singapore, this year’s competition will be held virtually, where participants will get the opportunity to showcase their creations in the global community.
If you have never heard of the MakeX Spark Competition, your kids might be missing out on a ton of fun! The yearly competition is a project-based creative design programme specially created for young learners between the ages of 6 to 16. With a specific theme every year, participants will have to devise solutions through software programming and hardware construction. Teenagers will be encouraged to apply interdisciplinary knowledge to practical problems and improve their problem solving and logical thinking abilities through a STEAM programme.
Robotics Competition Details
The Theme
This year’s competition theme is Family Care and contestants are expected to come up with brilliant ideas and projects based on the theme of showing love and care to their family members with robotics. Some core questions to consider while building their projects include:
- How many family members are there in your home?
- Who are they?
- Have you met any problems while living with your family?
- What kind of care do they require?
- Do you know anyone who lacks family care within your community in Singapore – how can you help them?
MakeX Spark Programme
The MakeX Spark Online competition will consist of a total of five components – Learning and Research, Basic Workshops Project Design and Construction, Online Submission and Evaluation and Awarding.
Participants will be able to attend basic workshops to learn the basics of hardware and software during the Learning and Research phase, where they will come up with the topic of interest for further research. After that, they will move on to Project Design and Construction to generate possible solutions according to the theme and start creating their poster and test their solutions.
Once they have nailed down the finer details of the project and are ready for submission, they will compile all relevant images, videos, descriptions, posters and personal information to submit online to the mBlock community to undergo evaluation. Finally, the panel of judges will evaluate and announce various awardees during the online awards ceremony.
Awards and Takeaways
There are a wide array of awards that will be given out to deserving contestants during the awards ceremony, which includes the Young All-Rounder award (Top 3), Young Designer (Top 15% of each group), Young Innovator (Top 15% of each group), Young Engineer (Top 15% of each group), Best Demonstration (Top 15% of each group). Mentors and educational institutes can look forward to the Excellent Mentor (1 awardee) and Excellent Organisation (1 awardee) award.
Other than E-certificates that will be given out with each award, winners of the Young All-Rounder award will also receive a medal and a CyberPi Go Kit, a single-board computer meant for computer science and STEAM education. Non-awarded participants will receive a certificate of participation as well.
How to Join the MakeX Spark Competition
Thinking of letting your child join this year’s MakeX Spark Competition? Well, there’s no time to waste! As participants are highly encouraged to use mBlock 5 to program their projects, you can first purchase the relevant equipment through Polaris Network or MakeX before starting on the projects.
You can either enter your child in the Elementary (6 to 12 years old) or Intermediate (13 to 16 years old) age group as a team of two or as a single participant. Thereafter, simply take note of the submission period (25 October to 7 November) and the results announcement dates (22 – 24 November). The online awards ceremony will be held on 6 December.
Visit MakeX to read the full rules for the competition.
