RoboKings 2006
As I wandered past a few geeky looking kids meddling with machine parts (I don’t think that’s the technical term), it didn’t appear to be a particularly exciting piece of news to report on. On closer examination I had stumbled across RoboKings 2006, a huge nationwide competition where school teams compete to produce robots that need to complete a variety of tasks to see off their competitors.
These kids weren’t geeks at all, they were articulate, logical and displayed a great deal of passion in producing some incredible results. Whilst speaking to a competitor named Heidi, who was 13 and spoke better English than some of the people who live in my home town, she explained to me how they’d been working through the night to ensure that their robot was up to scratch. They had four people in their team, all of which were assigned to a different area of expertise. When it was Heidi’s turn to test out the robot on the winding course, it performed with great skill, resulting in a huge round of applause from the smiling on-lookers.
Click for larger imageU.K technology companies should learn from Roboking’s Roboking 2006 event. The event is funded by a local university, whose aim is to improve technological understanding within their high schools. Students from between the ages of 14-19 are invited to take part in a free to enter competition which has been running since last June. The competition had been whittled down to 16 teams, consisting of 4-5 people in a team, and had a medieval theme. Students had to construct a robot to perform set tasks, from the relative simplicity of navigating a tree-laden course, to the complexity of picking up objects, transporting them, and dropping them off at set locations.
The grand prize, awarded on Sunday, is a humanoid robot, although how they’ll share it with their colleagues we’ll never know. The clever clogs will probably programme them to visit each others houses.
Click for larger imageIt was hardly Robot Wars, but they were kids, and it was something that this country should look at implementing in our schools, Robo King is the first competiton of its kind in Europe.
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