High school students from St Paul’s International College have excelled at a region-wide robotics competition, qualifying for the nationals round.
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Two teams from the school – one senior and one junior – competed in the NSW and ACT Regional round of the worldwide VEX EDR Robotics Competition on Saturday, November 18.
Out of 13 teams from Sydney, Canberra and regional NSW, the school’s senior team (Years 9 to 11) qualified second place and the junior team (Year 7 and 8) seventh place in the finals.
The senior team went on to win the Competition Championship award in partnership with a team from Goulburn.
Both teams will go on to compete in the national championships held in Victoria on December 2.
This was the second robotics competition ever entered by the St Paul’s students, after they won the Highlands round of the VEX competition earlier this year.
The students built their own robots for the event, meeting during lunch time as part of a new robotics club set up by teacher Anton Planting.
Named ‘In the Zone’, the competition was played by teams of between two and five students on a small square field and required students to either program or drive-control their robots to move cones around the space.
The object of the game was to attain a higher score than the opposing team by stacking cones on goals, by scoring mobile goals in goal zones, by having the highest stacks, and by parking robots.
Mr Planting said he was “very impressed” with both teams, who have only been working together building robots, coding and programming for the past three months.
“There was a lot of strategy and teamwork involved,” he said.
“They are dealing with a lot of real life challenges [in the competition] – where things don’t always go to plan and they have to be able to adapt.
“It’s really exciting for them, they love it.”
The winning teams from the nationals competition will go on to compete in the world championships held in Kentucky in April 2018.