Students from a Letchworth school will represent the UK at the a global robotics tournament in the USA in April, after coming first at the UK challenge in Peterborough.
St Christopher School teams were among 500 students from across the south of England to attend the KingsGate Conference to compete in the inaugural FIRST Tech Challenge UK Championships.
Team St Christopher’s Snowflakes brought home the Inspire Award with support from Cambridge-based global technology firm Arm and will now represent the UK at the championships held in Detroit from Wednesday, April 24 to Saturday, April 27.
The challenge is an expeditionary robotics programme for those aged 12 to 18, seeking to build relationships between today’s professionals and tomorrow’s talent.
Working in teams of up to 15, and supported by an industry mentor, young people design, build and programme a robot to compete in the annual championships.
Team members assume individual and collaborative roles reflective of real-life careers – from software engineers and designers, to project managers and communications officers – and all play a part in becoming competition-ready.
During the championship event in Peterborough, teams competed against each other within alliances, using their robots to complete a series of tasks on a space-themed playing field.
Teams were also required to present engineering notebooks, documenting their journey through the programme, to a panel of industry judges.
Honey Glennie from St Christopher’s Snowflakes said: “It hasn’t properly sunk in yet that we have won the Inspire Award and will be heading to Detroit!
“We feel so shocked – winning is a dream come true. We can’t wait to head to America, our teacher is from America so it will be really special.
“A particular highlight for all of us was all the people that we met on the day, all the teams were amazing and deserve a shout-out.”
Other awards up for grabs includes Judges’ Sportsmanship, Control, Motivate, Design and Collins Aerospace.
The next season of FIRST Tech Challenge UK will launch on May 1. Visit morethanrobots.uk for more information.
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