Congratulations to our Habs Robotics team who won the Student Robotics Competition for 2023!
Miss Harrison and Mr Lee accompanied James (U6H1), Noah (U6S2), Alain (U6S2), Amy (GS U6KXO), Oliver (U6H1), Robin (U6C2), Anurag (U6J1), Zeshan (U6C2), Akhtar (U6H1) and Armaan (U6C2) to Southampton University just after the end of term. There, the team competed in a two-day final.
The group have been building an autonomous robot from scratch since October last year and writing thousands of lines of code that was inputted into the robot. This would allow it to detect cubes using a camera and created a positioning system to collect them and bring them back to the team’s ‘home zone’ in order to gain points as they competed against three other teams in an arena.
League matches ran all day Saturday and Sunday morning. The team had to overcome several unexpected problems along the way including lighting and camera issues, hardware fails, engineering tweaks, code errors, but worked calmly, collaboratively and always with determination and smiles on their faces.
The team had gone into the physical competition at the top of a very competitive field after an amazing success in the online preliminary competition. It was fantastic for the team to maintain their lead after the first day, especially with the brilliant competition around them who had some very impressive robots of their own. The team managed their time and resources effectively, taking notes on other teams, strategising which tactics to adopt for each match.
The students were incredibly proud to have made it the final and were ecstatic to take the eventual win! They were phenomenal throughout and the robotics staff commented on their spirit, energy, determination and incredible skill. The robot was recognised as one of the best built and the code was complimented as the most advanced they had ever seen compete.
At the competition, the team became the first ever team in over 15 years of the competition’s history to score over 1,000 points!
Well done to all!
