WRO history
It all started back in 1999...
At that time, Mr. TaeSoo Park, the president of the Korean company ”Learning Tool, Inc.”, contacted Mr. Lars Vahl, Director of LEGO Education Asia Pacific, suggesting they should set up a robotics competition involving students from Asian countries.
In year 2000, four countries (Korea, China, Japan and Singapore) joined the pilot project, and the first international competition – titled International Robot Olympiad - took place in the Olympic Park in Seoul, Korea.
World Robot Olympiad was founded in 2004
In 2003 the four founding countries and LEGO Education established an international WRO Committee, who decided to establish a new and permanent robotic organization, based on the idea that students from all over the world should have the opportunity to meet with other students to fulfill the new mission statement, which read:
“To bring together young people all over the world to develop their creativity, design & problem solving skills through challenging & educational robot competitions and activities”
Members of the 1st WRO Committee from top left to bottom right:
Mr. Tae Soo Park and Dr.Youm (Korea), Dr. Kanai (Japan), Mr. Lars Vahl (Denmark), Mr. Clarence Sirisena (Singapore), Mr. Eugene Zhang (China), Mr. Kobayashi (Japan), Dr. Marcello Ang (Sgp.)
The WRO Committee decided the new name WORLD ROBOT OLYMPIAD and new WRO logos were developed.
Finally the WRO Statutes and a set of General Rules were worked out to ensure a sound and safe future for WRO. One of the major decisions, which appears in the Statutes, was that the international WRO event should be hosted by a new country each year and a WRO Chairman should be elected by the WRO Committee once a year.
The awareness of WRO grew rapidly and already in 2004, 12 countries participated in the international WRO event hosted by Singapore.
In 2011, close to 15,000 children from 34 countries participated (see development in numbers of participants here).
Protecting the WRO brand in 2010
To protect the WRO brand the WRO Committee decided to register WRO as a non-profit association under the name WORLD ROBOT OLYMPIAD ASSOCIATION Ltd. On 29th May 2010, WRO was officially registered as a legal entity with the Accounting and Corporate Regulatory Authority (ACRA) in Singapore.
Consequently, the organization and management of WRO was changed. The highest authority in WRO is now the WRO Advisory Council (AC) with 12 members. The AC elects the WRO Chairman, the WRO Secretary General as well as six members of the WRO Board of Trustees (BoT). The BoT elects a WRO Program Manager to implement decisions made by the BoT and AC.
