Narooma High School’s senior robotics team named the “RoboRebels” have just competed in Australia regional leg of the FIRST Robotics Competition in Sydney at the end of last week.
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The RoboRebels joined around 50 student teams from around Australia, as well as neighbouring countries of the Asia Pacific including Singapore, Taiwan, India and China to compete in the championships.
Narooma High School after the first round of competition did the community proud being ranked at 25 out 50, only one spot out of the finals, a magnificent effort considering most of the other teams were from universities and big city private schools.
Ulladulla High School was selected by one of the top teams to join its alliance and amazingly the students from that school just up the coast are headed to the USA to compete in the FIRST final.
FIRST, which stands for ‘For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology’, was created to inspire an appreciation of science and technology in young people, their schools, and their communities. You can learn more here: firstaustralia.org
The 17 Narooma High School students have spent less than six weeks to design and build an original robot to compete in the competition, which required a large amount of funding.
The school and robotics students are very grateful to have received grants from Google, FIRST, Macquarie University and Ford to help fund this activity.
A group of students, led by Cyann Vlatkovic, approached our wonderful local community and we were delighted to receive sponsorship of $3850 from Narooma Sporting Services Club, $500 from Narooma Plaza, $1000 from Narooma Quota International, as well as support from OddBodds Fitness, Montague Vets, Betta Electrical, Narooma Fruit and Veg and Narooma IGA. Banners, badges and shirts were supplied locally by Narooma Ezyprint.
“These community funds helped us with the cost of transport and accommodation for students, the robot and tool kits in getting to Sydney for the competition, without community support we could not have made it, so a big thank you goes out to these groups,” science teacher Gayle Allison said.
The students arrived in Sydney on Wednesday, March 16 in time to drop their robot, nicknamed ‘Damo’, into the pit area at Sydney Olympic Park Sports Centre and they then travelled to Macquarie University for a welcome barbecue event.
“Early Thursday morning preparations and final adjustments were made to our robot, with the finalisation of a robotic arm to shoot goals, practice matches and the stress of passing robot inspection numerous times,” Mrs Allison explained.
“On first inspection our arm was 1-inch too long and the axle was sticking out 1 cm to far on either side, so more pit time to fix this up. It was amazing the continual challenges thrown at our team and their ability to work collaboratively to overcome these obstacles.
“On Friday morning qualification matches began and we competed in seven matches as part of an alliance of three teams on a field of 8 metres by 14 metres. The goal is to score as many points as possible as part of an alliance by crossing the oppositions defences, shooting low or high goals and climbing the oppositions castle – all games based on medieval theme ‘Stronghold’ – in a time period of 2.5 minutes.
“On this day, due to a serious lack of driver training before the robot was bagged and tagged back in February 23, the team decided democratically to allow students interested to have a go at driving, which was wonderful inclusive team work.
“Our robot took many hits, losing a robot arm, the team rebuilt a modified arm to help cross obstacles. We lost that and a bumper while helping out an alliance mate. More repairs, inspections to come back and compete again. We reached a ranking high of 11 during this day.
“Come Saturday morning, we still had three qualification matches to go. Our first match saw Damo our robot land in the moat in the automated 15 seconds at the start of the match and while alliance team mates tried to bump us out we ended up stuck in the moat for entire game.
“We were devastated! However, team regrouped yet again, rallied and went on for two more matches, the final one a tie until official score came in at a 2-point loss. We ranked at 25, 1 spot out of the finals.”
Mrs Allison said the Narooma students stayed on and watched the magnificent finals, also being on the emergency list, which turned out to be a closely contested competition.
The winning teams of Thunder Down Under (Macquarie Uni), Barker Red Backs (Barker College Sydney) and House of Ulladulla (Ulladulla High School) – a fellow rookie public school - will compete in the FIRST Championships in St Louis, USA later this year.
She said Narooma High was lucky to have been nominated by NASA engineer Tyler Evans for being a great rookie team and the team won an Ecocycle 3D printer from a FIRST official and former FRC team member. “Amazing!”
“What’s next? Well over the coming weeks we will be using our 3D printer, doing demonstrations with Damo – watch out Narooma Plaza and Quota – preparing for more competitions with more driver/programming training and EV3 workshops scheduled for April 29, May 14 and 28 and June 18 next school term. May the robotics continue!”