(Courtesy of AMIT) Even though they decided not to compete on Saturday, members of AMIT boys’ young robot team from Mr. & Mrs. Lester Sutker Art and Sciences Jr. and Sr. High School picked up the Australian International Cup.

The Kipa Bots, the young robotics team of the AMIT Boys School in Modi’in, won the first international league robotics competition this year in the International Leagues’ Robotics Competition in the research category, which was attended by 80 players from around the world who presented their robots.

This year, the members of the Kipa Bots, who participated in the competition for the first time, built and programmed a Lego robot that independently solves complex tasks on a special task board. In addition, the students carried out research work on the annual theme of the program—human space travel. The children learned from various experts, including an astronaut and a NASA doctor, about the difficulties faced by astronauts and with them will deal with future space travelers. At the same time, they heard from researchers about possible solutions to some of the problems. The team members chose to focus on a solution to the problem of blood flow under weightlessness and, following an idea they heard from one of the researchers, developed the “Greerreb”—a device that stimulates blood flow to the legs by vibration. The device, which has aroused great interest, has found applications in various populations, regardless of traveling through space, and there was talk about a preliminary patent pending.

During the competition, which was opened on Thursday, the team members decided that Modi’in would not participate in the activities during the Sabbath, in a joint decision with teacher Tzachi Green. The organizers of the competition agreed to pass on some of the missions to Friday, and during the Sabbath the members of the dome placed a large sign on their stand, explaining to the rest of the audience why they were not competing on the Sabbath. In addition, they added code that could be scanned to reach an English video explaining the meaning of the Jewish day of rest. The principal of the school, Lior Halevi, wrote a personal letter to his students this week: “When I saw the sign that you prepared for Shabbat, I was filled with excitement and pride…You may lose some points, but from my perspective, you won. We are happy to live in the generation after the Inquisition, after the decrees of destruction and after the Holocaust, and today the dedication of the soul is of love, of willingly and not of coercion, of presenting the Sabbath as a value to the entire world.”