By Rukhshana Media
Months after being forced to leave Afghanistan, the Afghan girls’ robotics team won second prize in an international competition for environmental change among 88 countries, the team captain told Rukhshana Media.
The competition took place two months ago online, where Somaya Faruqi, Shabnam Nurzai and Ayda Haydarpour represented Afghanistan in the Innovation for Environmental Change 2021 International Student Design Competition (#PCBeTheChange).
“Among 88 teams from 88 countries, we won second place. It is a big achievement because it can resolve a serious problem in Afghanistan,” Somaya Faruqi, the team captain, told Rukhshana Media from Qatar, where she and eight members of her team continue their education.
“We thought traffic was a big problem in our cities. So we decided to make a board to control traffic,” Faruqi said.
The team designed a smart traffic light to resolve traffic issues in Afghanistan. The team announced the result of the competition on Friday on the team’s Facebook page.
The traffic system they designed can control traffic based on the number of cars passing in each direction and transfer information to a control system for traffic violations.
Since the team participated in the First Global Challenge robotics competition in Washington in 2017, the girls robotic team continues to make headlines, representing Afghanistan in a positive light.
In November 2017, the Afghan girls robotics team won the “Entrepreneurial Challenge” at the Robotex festival, held in Tallinn, Estonia.
In that challenge in Europe’s largest robotics festival, the robotics team created a solar-powered robot that can help small farmers.
Faruqi said the rest of her 50 members team are still in Afghanistan, continuing their education online. The girls robotic team has enrolled new students from Kabul and Herat who will soon start their training online.
