Teen’s robots rock in Robocup
Charlie Mollard loves design and robots, and is in his element taking part in robot wars.
The 13-year-old St Peter’s College pupil says he chose the school partly because of its robotics club.
Members often spend their lunch times, after school and holidays working on challenge briefs, designing, programming and troubleshooting.
St Peter’s robotics club is strong, Charlie says, because it was one of the earliest to start using the Vex IQ build system they usually compete with. Members share their knowledge, passing down experience and technical know-how from senior to junior members.
Charlie was part of the team that earned an excellence award at the Vex IQ robotics nationals in 2015 – the top award, and the team that won a promote award in the 2016 nationals.
In between, he was part of the New Zealand contingent to compete at the Vex IQ Challenge World Championships in Kentucky.
The Kiwi team finished middle of the field, he says, but he brought home a lot of new ideas for design and strategy. Some he has put to use, with mixed results, he says.
On June 17, he and a St Peter’s team took on, and won, the theatre challenge in the Central North Island Robocup competition.
‘‘It’s about entertaining the judges. They look at how complicated they are, how well they work and how good it looks.’’
Charlie was the lead builder, and designed a moving, rock band, inspired by the School of Rock film.
‘‘I like the characters, it’s fun and it’s different, so I thought, ‘why not make it about the soundtrack?’’’
Charlie hopes to use his design skills one day in his career, perhaps to design Lego.
‘‘More people should be doing robotics. It’s a great experience, it’s fun, but you’re learning stuff too.’’