Such opinion was expressed during a written preview interview with Professor Kim Jong-hwan who serves as chairman of the International Robot Olympiad Committee (IROC www.iroc.org).
Referring to a fact that Singapore IRO is scheduled to be held simultaneously with RoboAsia 2007 in which robot education academic rallies and exhibitions take place together, he expressed great expectations by saying that Singapore IRO is expected to be a big robot festival through which robot tournaments, exhibition and academic rallies are linked together one.
The robot veteran who serves as KAIST professor too said: "For the sake of smooth hosting, on-the-spot organizing committee was moved to admiration about Korean participation teams' excellent real ability and a stadium's fever by visiting KINTEX firsthand during the period of nationwide rally on August of this year."
He said he heard that surrounding countries also such as Malaysia and Indonesia are spurring to selecting participation team for the Singapore tournament participation. Malaysia among others has applied for hosting next year IRO 2008 to publicize the necessity of robot education from the national level.
In the case of the 8th IRO held in Australia on December of last year too, Kim said he heard that Australian people, the Australian Education Ministry and the authorities concerned wondered at participating players' skill and many discussions were under way internally about the fact that other countries including South Korea enforce robot education competitively.
It is said that in the case of Singapore, the country has been showing continuous interest in robot education, producing participation teams differently from Australia which is indifferent to robot education and the government dimension also deeply recognizes the importance of science education including robotics, according to Kim.
The IROC chairman notes that Malaysia, Indonesia, India and Iran in recent years are interested in robot education. In that respect, he expected that this IRO would play a big role in allowing the persons concerned in those countries to provoke interest in robot education.
The International Robot Olympiad was forged in the hope of preparing a meeting ground for world children youth so that children and the younger generation can nurture scientific creativity to be able to usher their new age through robots. Robot Olympiad nationwide rally in Korea proceeded over six days from August 10th to 15th to select a national Korean team who will take part in the world tournament.
With regard to Robot Olympiad games, Kim explains: "These games are designed to be able to judge participants' problem solving abilities, program operation abilities, and robot manufacturing abilities simultaneously through diverse mission execution."
The chairman emphasizes that the Robot Olympiad is widely recognized in terms of its public confidence power in that it operates under the strict supervision of the IROC committee which is comprised of 25 international robot field authorities throughout the world.
In conjunction with Robot Olympiad's international standing as well as development plan, Chairman Kim noted that next year becomes the 10th anniversary since this Robot Olympiad started. Over the last century, robot technology has been developing over our expectations and interest about robots also became higher, he epitomized.
He said that he believes this Robot Olympiad has gained international awareness though there have been several difficulties over the past 9 years. Now the Olympiad is on track to be operated with systems alone to a certain degree.
The chairman said that he will concentrate his efforts on forging a ground of exchange in which world children can become one with robots as the preferred medium during the next 10 years.
