Students from Landau Forte College Derby have come out victorious in a national robot building competition. Landau Robotics is an recently started afterschool club for students (11 to 14) with a passion for building and designing robots to solve practical tasks. The new members have shown plenty of promise through winning 5 awards for VEX Robotics regional tournaments.
The robots were assessed on their ability to complete a series of challenges, and how quickly they accomplished them, with the most successful then judged by a panel of experts who selected the best overall designs.
The students came top of the class in the Parking Challenge, the Drilling Challenge, and had even two teams come joint first in the Terrain Challenge. The competition saw students use programming technology to support their learning in STEM subjects.
As a result, the school has won a Miro-E robot. Miro-E is an advanced AI robot adapted for education with robust hardware and a specialised programming interface to facilitate students coding. The robot was donated by Sebastian Conran, Director at Consequential Robotics, who has also offered to come to the school and demonstrate the working of the robot, as well as offering coding lessons.
The winning students, plus their parents and a member of staff, were honoured at an award ceremony at the International Robotics Showcase on 27 June at the Royal Geographical Society in London. The pinnacle showcase event of the annual UK Robotics Week, the awards ceremony will feature an array of the latest robotic technologies, live demonstrations, plus the winners of this year’s Surgical and Manufacturing Robotics Challenges.
Alison Brannick, Principal, Landau Forte College Derby, said:
“I am delighted our students performed so well in the building robot competition. We know how important programming skills will be for the future and their success in these challenges shows how well they are performing in STEM subjects.”
“The Miro-E robot will be a valuable addition to our programming provision and will help our students take the next step with their technical expertise. Our students are so excited to receive their awards at the International Robotics Showcase, and find out more about the latest stage in robotics.”
Isla, Year 8 student and Robotics Team member said ‘When I joined robotics at school, I was looking for a fun and interactive club that would be able to challenge me and help me understand more about programming and learn more about robots- that is exactly what I got, plus much more. When the opportunity for a competition that would test my knowledge and skills came up, I was excited to take part, designing robots and testing robots. Eventually I managed to get a robot that completed the challenge in a quick time and was pretty efficient and led to the exciting award’
