A school project can be a poster board and a nervous speech. For two teens in Quindio, it became a flight to Singapore and a world prize. Their robot idea, Avitron, turned a simple question into a big moment.
The question was farm-life simple: How can small poultry growers waste less feed and keep chickens healthier. The answer involved mixed robotics, coding, and AI, and it earned Colombia a standout award at World Robot Olympiad 2025.
A win far from home
The WRO 2025 final in Singapore brought together more than 1,500 young participants from many countries. In that crowd, Colombia’s team took the Technical Solution Award in Future Innovators Junior.
The students were Sofia Garzon Sanchez and Juan Pablo Celades Silva from GI School in Armenia. Their project name, Avitron, became the reason Quindio showed up in a global robotics conversation.
Behind the scenes, the coaching team mattered. Julian Fernando Vargas Escobar guided the students, and Juan Jose Ramirez Betancur, an electronics engineering student from Universidad del Quindio, supported the technical work.
Meet Avitron, the smart poultry station
Avitron was built for the daily chaos of a rural chicken coop. It dispenses food automatically, recognizes individual hens, and helps stop other species from eating feed meant for the birds.
The students framed it as a practical tool for small producers, where every handful of feed counts. If a system can reduce waste and keep animals better managed, it can protect income in places where margins are tight.
Avitron also aimed to be easy to use and affordable, not a fancy lab toy. That design choice often decides whether tech stays on a table at a fair or ends up working in the real world.
Why this award carries weight
The Technical Solution Award recognized a proposal that combined innovation with solid development and a working build, not just a nice concept. In plain terms, the robot had to make sense and actually do the job.
This mattered even more because the team competed against groups backed by institutions and government support, while their main help came from their school and families. They still pushed through long workdays, mistakes, and rebuilds.
The category itself explains the focus. In WRO Future Innovators, teams develop a robot that solves real-world problems, and they present the project at competition time. The category is open source, so teams can use tools such as Arduino, Raspberry Pi, or LEGO.
Judging is also fast and intense. Each evaluation session lasts 10 minutes, with 5 minutes for the pitch and 5 minutes for questions. That format rewards teams that can explain clearly and show a prototype that behaves.
What this kind of robotics builds
WRO describes itself as a global robotics competition for kids and young people from more than 106 countries. That scale is a big classroom, where students compare ideas, test their English, and learn how other teams think.
The project also trained a “real product” mindset. The students talked about improving Avitron, validating it technically, and exploring patent steps and partnerships with the poultry sector. That is how a student build starts acting like a startup plan.
In Colombia, stories like this can shift how families view STEM. It stops being “just computers” and starts looking like problem-solving for farms, cities, and everyday life, with teamwork at the center.
From trophy to real coops
The next challenge is simple: Make Avitron tougher, cheaper, and ready for messy conditions like dust, rain, and constant use. A farm tool has to survive, not just impress judges.
If that happens, the win will mean more than a medal. It will mean a student-built idea that helps small poultry growers save feed, manage animals, and feel that tech can belong to rural Colombia, too.