美国国家公共电台 NPR What Really Happened At That Robotics Competition You've Heard So Much About

SCOTT SIMON, HOST:

This week, a highly anticipated robotics competition for 15 to 18 year olds from 157 nations ended in controversy 1 - the way it began. On Wednesday, six members of the team from the East African country of Burundi vanished. The teams from Gambia and Afghanistan also made headlines after the U.S. State Department denied them entry visas. Eventually, they were allowed to compete. As NPR's Claudio Sanchez reports, the drama marred 2 an otherwise uplifting event that was focused on youngsters and robots.

CLAUDIO SANCHEZ, BYLINE 3: Dean Kamen, the inventor entrepreneur and founder 4 of FIRST Global Challenge, opened the competition with a simple message.

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DEAN KAMEN: Politics divides the world. Technology can unite the world.

SANCHEZ: And with that, an Olympic-style parade of nations filled Constitution Hall in Washington, D.C.

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KAMEN: It is my sincere pleasure to formally declare the 2017 FIRST Global Challenge open.

SANCHEZ: Every team arrived with a robot in tow, built with the exact same components 5, each designed, engineered and programmed differently to gobble up and sort plastic balls. For two days, teenagers rich and poor, male and female competed on a level playing field. But there were reminders 6 like the team made up of Syrian refugees that in some parts of the world, there is no such thing as a level playing field.

FADIL HARABI: Maybe more than 90 percent of the Syrian refugee in Lebanon don't have the passport, don't have the legal status.

SANCHEZ: Fadil Harabi, the team's mentor 7, says getting passports was a lot more complicated than building a robot.

UNIDENTIFIED GROUP: (Chanting) Team Hope. Team Hope. Team Hope.

SANCHEZ: Every time the Syrians, called Team Hope, competed, kids from other countries cheered them on. For Colleen Johnson, 18, a member of the all-girl U.S. team, that's what this event was all about.

COLLEEN JOHNSON: Everybody here is working together, helping 8 each other fix programming issues, to lift each other up, to make the best competition possible.

SANCHEZ: For Team Honduras, the technology gap between poor and rich nations is as much about opportunity as it is about resources.

DANIEL MARQUEZ: (Foreign language spoken).

SANCHEZ: Seventeen-year-old Daniel Marquez says Honduras is a country where there aren't many opportunities. Not a single member of the team had ever handled a remote control, let alone built a robot.

MELISSA LEMUS: (Foreign language spoken).

SANCHEZ: "The world today demands that we understand technology," says Melissa Lemus, one of two girls on the team. As the competition entered its third and final day, I checked in on Afghanistan's all-girls team. It seemed they had grown weary of the media frenzy 9 around them.

LIDA AZIZI: (Foreign language spoken).

SANCHEZ: Speaking through an interpreter, 15-year-old Lida Azizi was disappointed that her team's skills and the robot the girls built had gotten a lot less attention than their visa problems.

UNIDENTIFIED MAN: They're happy to be here, but it's very exhausting for them. They've had very little sleep, so they're at an active disadvantage here.

SANCHEZ: The Afghan's consolation 10 prize - a medal for courageous 11 achievement, plus knowing they had placed much higher in countries like Canada, the United Kingdom and the U.S. Top honors went to Team Europe, Poland and Armenia. The event ended like one big party with a hopeful message delivered by World Bank president Jim Kim.

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JIM KIM: You are the first generation in human history that can end extreme poverty in the world. From what I saw of these robots, I know you can do it.

SANCHEZ: Kim's message was not lost on anyone. Intelligence and talent with a moral vision have no borders, no race, nationality, religion or gender 12. Claudio Sanchez, NPR News.