WRO® Guidelines

The regulations for each category are described in the General Rules for that category. Additional regulations are:

  • A team may participate in only one category per season. Any student may participate in one team only.
  • The age group defines the maximum age of the student in the calendar year of the competition. (Not their age at the date of a competition.)
  • The minimum age of a coach at an international WRO® event is age 18.
  • Coaches may work with more than one team.

The WRO® Guiding Principles

We are aware that a competition usually means that those involved are driven to win. This applies to team members, coaches, parents and even to countries. We feel there is nothing wrong with that, as long as the guiding principles of the competition remain intact. We expect all teams and coaches participating in the competition to respect the WRO® Ethics Code. The WRO® Guiding Principles are:
  • Teams are encouraged to learn and master new skills while having fun together.
  • Coaches, mentors and parents are there to guide the teams, not to do the work for them.
  • Participating and learning are more important than winning.
Guiding Principles & Ethics Code

WRO® Ethics Code for Teams

“It is not whether you win or lose, but how much you learn that counts.”

We are participating in a competition. We like to win. We want to learn. And we also want to have fun.

We want to play fair. We design our own robot and we write our own software. It is not fair if someone else does that for us.

We can only learn if we try things ourselves. Our coach can teach us things and guide us. And we can also get inspired by others.

But our coach should not do the work for us. And we do not simply copy a robot or software from someone else.

We use the examples we find to design our own robot and programming.

Sometimes we fail and that is OK. Original ideas come from failing.

WINNING IS NICE BUT FAILING IS PART OF OUR JOURNEY.