Events

Youth Gearing Up for Exciting Robotics Competitions at the University of Waterloo

If you like robots, you will want to watch teams compete at the University of Waterloo during the weekend of Saturday Nov 30-Sunday Dec 1. The fields are set for innovation, creativity, and teamwork as FIRST Lego League (FLL) and FIRST Tech Challenge (FTC) teams from across Waterloo-Wellington region, Hamilton region and the Greater Toronto Area prepare to display their skills at the two qualifier events organized by Waterloo-Wellington FIRST Robotics in partnership with Waterloo Engineering.

On Saturday, November 30, over a hundred of Grade 4 to 8 students will put their engineering skills and student-designed LEGO-based robots to the test on the SUBMERGED competition fields; these 19 teams will compete to win a spot at the Provincial Championship in January. The opening ceremony is at 8:30am followed by FIRST LEGO robot matches starting at 9am until 3pm, with the award ceremony at 3h45pm.

On Sunday, December 1, 23 teams of high school students will compete with their FIRST Tech Challenge robots and build their alliance to become the champion of the inaugural event at Waterloo.  Following qualification games, teams will select their alliance partners and will aim to become the first champion of the WWFIRST FTC qualifier event. The opening ceremony is at 11am and robot games will take place from 11:30am until 5pm.   Awards ceremony is at 5h30pm.

Both events take place in Engineering 7. Members of the public are welcome to attend the events. Pits, where teams work on their robots and display their projects and outreach activities, are also open to the public from 9am to 4pm.

The FIRST Robotics Waterloo Regional Competition brings teams of Ontario's brightest high school students to the University of Waterloo campus to battle head-to-head with student-designed, remote-controlled robots. Built from scratch, these five-foot tall, 140-pound robots compete in high intensity robo-sports.

Watch as 12 outstanding Capstone teams compete for over $100k in prizes. These teams were shortlisted from over 50 entries representing most programs in the Faculty of Engineering. The Esch Awards support creative and entrepreneurial students in the pursuit of research and development and its commercialization for the benefit of Canada.

Artificial Intelligence is increasingly present in our lives. We see its impact on social media. We use it to translate, write emails, gain an edge on the stock market, drive cars, and even think for us. Many believe that this is just the start. Artificial Intelligence may have the power to disrupt the very foundations of how we live. One of those foundations is our country, Canada. Many of us are grateful to live in a country with an elected government, independent courts, social services, and civil liberties. In a time when the world anticipates the disruption that AI may bring, The Waterloo Forum asks, “Will AI undermine Canadian democratic institutions?”

Waterloo Engineering invites our future undergraduate students and their supporters to campus for Fall Open House to explore what the University of Waterloo has to offer!

Join us for a webinar presentation by Dr. Krzysztof Czarnecki on the current state of autonomous vehicles, exploring active deployments, emerging challenges and research directions. The talk will also highlight research taking place in the Waterloo Intelligent Systems Engineering (WISE) Laboratory, which co-led the development of the first autonomous vehicle tested on public roads in Canada.

RoboHub and ESG Partners will be hosting a panel on Harnessing Robotics & AI For Climate Solutions, which aims to explore how robotics and AI can be applied to climate solutions and how a climate lens can be applied to existing robotics work in areas like healthcare to address climate threats. This event is taking place during CCWX 2025, which runs from November 24 to November 30th.

Waterloo Engineering invites our future undergraduate students and their supporters to campus for March Open House to explore what the University of Waterloo has to offer!