​We are so proud of all the members of our Vex Robotics team this week. A group of nineteen students represented Scoil Naomh Eltin in CIT at a Cork Vex IQ Robotics competition last Tuesday, but this was less than half of the students who were involved overall. Our builders followed instructions to create two robots and then worked with the drivers and coders to adapt the design to maximise scoring points in the arena. This took a great deal of communication and teamwork. We were also fortunate to have the help of Kinsale Community School Transition Year Robot team, led by Niamh Hay, to help and guide us in the design and building of our robots Rex and Scorpion. Each visit to KCS and building class in Scoil Naomh Eltin was documented and photographed by our reporters. These journals, team profiles, design ideas, sketches, printed versions of the code and initial ideas for our STEM Research Project were all submitted to the judges in our Engineering Handbooks. We had two teams of coders who each programmed their robot to successfully score points autonomously using Vex IQ Block Code. We were able to play practise matches with Gaelscoil Chionn tSáile and were able to exchange ideas on design and games strategy.
On the day of the competition each of the two teams undertook individual driver challenges, an autonomous challenge and eight teamwork challenges. They really impressed the judges during two interviews; outlining their design ideas and building process, the vote to name the robots and what they learnt about programming. The teams helped each other overcome problems with motors, programming the arm and claw and velocity on the morning. They worked very well to maximise points in their alliances with the other schools by agreeing a strategy based on the robots’ strengths at the start of every match. We were very excited when Rex progressed to the final round on the afternoon.
Another group worked on a Research Project about the possibility of using Smart Bins to encourage recycling. They created an animation and a PowerPoint and three children gave their first college lecture in the lecture theatre in the library in CIT.
It has been a really enjoyable project, we have all learned a lot and grown in confidence. We are hopeful that we can continue with robotics this year and we wish KCS all the best in their competitions on Monday.
Le buíochas,
Ms Horan, Ms Deasy, Mrs Lordan, Ms Fahy