UK robot championships
Teams of students from across the country gathered in Telford, Shropshire, in England, at the end of April to take part in the UK national finals of the VEX Robotics Championships. It was the first time the competition, which inspires young people to consider careers in STEM (science, technology, engineering and maths), has been held face-to-face since the beginning of the pandemic.
Students from UK primary and secondary schools formed 120 teams to take part in competitions. The teams built and drove robots to carry out specific tasks and wrote computer code to control their behaviour and get the best results. The VEX Robotics Competition (VRC) involved a two-minute game in which teams used robots to pick up rings and hook them over movable targets. They scored extra points for getting the targets – and the robots themselves – delicately balanced on see-saw platforms.
The IQ Challenge was a fast and furious race that gave robots one minute to reach as many balls as possible. The balls were catapulted through high and low goalposts to score, before the robots tried to hang off a bar across the playing pitch. Robots could be directly controlled by the teams in Driving Skills matches, or given instructions in the form of coding in Programming Skills matches. There were lots of awards on offer in categories that included build quality, teamwork and creativity. The overall tournament champions in the VRC competition were Team Control Freaks from the John Warner School in Hoddesdon, Hertfordshire, and Langton A, from Simon Langton Grammar School for Boys in Canterbury, Kent, both in England. Top honours in the IQ Challenge went to the Gear Squad team from Queen Elizabeth’s School, and Memento Mori from Highgate School, both in London.
The UK finals were just one part of what’s now a global competition, with 22,500 teams competing in 45 countries. Now teams from the UK will take on others from around the globe at the World Championships in the US state of Texas. They won’t have to travel there, though, thanks to “remote tournament” software that has been developed so teams can compete online.