Winners of the 'Robot Design' category go through to the national finals at Birmingham NEC.
Ten Year 8 students from Northampton Academy travelled to Warwick Trident College to take part in this year’s Tomorrows Engineers Robotics Challenge 2018.
Aayush, Edwin, Liam, Neal, Jessica, Domantas, Molly, Dylan, Abdul and Riley have been working on the 10-week project, embracing the challenge of building a robot, then programming it to do specific tasks based on a specific theme.
The team separated themselves for different roles; some focused on a research project to come up with a solution to the problems encountered in humanitarian aid and aviation, whilst others concentrated on building and programming the robot to solve the different problems they ncountered.
The team, who are part of the Academy’s Nucleus STEM Stream researched, designed, planned, implemented and presented their own solution to a contemporary engineering problem – developed with support from sponsors of the challenge, The Royal Air Force and Rolls-Royce – gaining feedback on their work from the engineering community. The challenge aims to open up potential new careers to students and help put their school learning into context.
The students have earned themselves a place at the UK finals, which takes place at The Big Bang Fair, NEC, Birmingham, on Friday 15 March 2019.
Teacher Miss Hayley Davies said:
”I am very proud of the team, they did a fantastic job taking part in all aspects of the competition, showing ambition and determination, proudly walking away with two trophies for winning the 'Robot Design' category and becoming UK finalists.”
Student Liam said: 'I had lots of fun at the EEP Robotics Challenge and our team was lucky enough to win. We are all very proud of ourselves.'
A fellow student, Domantas added: 'We had lots of fun! it was very educational and we all acquired lots of new skills.'