We have already learned from other success stories that, in most cases, children’s creativity is more essential to encourage than we might think. With this ability to create something new, children express themselves and develop possibly the most important future asset — creative thinking. For instance, Karolis, who is now constructing various robotics projects, became a young engineer at the early childhood when building bridges from straws and constructing Lego projects was the biggest entertainment. So how did he grow into someone, who is now can be proud of his contemporary engineering projects and who is willing to teach other children about robotics engineering?
As Karolis says, his childish hobby became his main activity at the age of 11 when he started attending Robotics School. About that time, being in 6th grade, a boy with his team developed their first innovation — a smart bracelet which can help people in extreme natural disaster and allow to call for help. Considering that this boy has always been a good engineer and had a great potential in this activity, eventually he started to represent Lithuania in various international events: his first time was participating in RoboCup competition which took place in Portugal. There, together with his team-mate, Karolis were competing with other teams in robot’s football category. For this task, they built their own robot footballers which were programmed to communicate with each other and play a game fully autonomous. Last year, at the age of 16, Karolis successfully created his first race drone which can speed up to 90 km per hour.
The most memorable achievement, as Karolis remembers, is representing Lithuania in international robotics competition “First Global” where together with Lukas and Šarūnas, who already told their story of success, built a robot and took 21st place out of 163. That is quite an achievement — all three of them believe that this was achieved only because their previously gained experience — Lukas and Šarūnas have been already built a 3D printer and Karolis had his own experience from participating in RoboCup. This opportunity to be a part of such internationally significant competition was like their childish dreams finally became true.
Right now, Karolis is sharing his experience and knowledge with other children in American International School of Vilnius. An idea to teach children came to his mind when he was a volunteer in a summer camp of Robotics School for the first time — then he understood how much he enjoys helping younger engineers. He also thinks that young people who creates new things are significantly important because nowadays there are so many unfulfilled and potential opportunities in IT field that need to be realized. And all young people who are brave enough to take these opportunities are creating our modern future.
