House of Science robotics team win national champs

National Robotics Champions

A team from the House of Science won the NZ VEX EDR Robotics Championships held in Auckland last weekend, and has qualified for the VEX Robotics World Championships in Louisville, Kentucky, USA at the end of April. The competition, aimed mainly at high school aged students, was held at the Massey University Albany campus and involved 70 teams each with their own robot.

Dean Strydom was one of the original members of the House of Science Robotics Team so it was extremely rewarding for him to win his final NZ event before having to move onto the tertiary level VEXU competition. He has represented NZ at 2 previous World Championships but had never won the NZ Nationals. Samuel Gillies-Smith assisted Dean in building the successful robot over the summer holidays, whilst Dean programmed and drove it in the competition.

The House of Science Robotics Club had 3 teams and a total of 9 students entered in the Nationals. All performed strongly during the qualification phase of the event and after having 8 games each, were ranked 2nd, 3rd and 16th out of the 90 teams there. The “A” team that was ranked second (made up of Callum McLeod, George Feast, Jacob Church and Orion Thomas) was one of only 2 teams that made it through qualification matches unbeaten. This gave them the opportunity to choose which other team they would like to alliance with for elimination matches. Although a 2 robot House of Science alliance would have been very strong, they made the strategic move of choosing a team from Kristin School so the Tauranga club would have all three teams in separate alliances meaning there was more chance of a House of Science team making it through to the grand final. The House of Science “B” team (Samuel Gillies-Smith, Gaby Absalom, William Bruning and Samuel Cowan) unfortunately came up against Dean’s robot in the quarter final and although they put up a decent battle they were forced out of the competition by their more experienced clubmate. The “A” team was also knocked out at the quarter final stage.

Dean Strydom also won the “STEM Award” for the House of Science team, and Jacob Church did some impressive programming with the A team robot to finish the weekend ranked 3rd in Programming Skills. The team are mentored by Paul and Shane de Rijk who were previously involved with the very successful Otumoetai College Robotics team. Otumoetai College were also well represented at the Nationals with 4 robots competing. The two Tauranga based teams helped each other throughout the event sharing equipment and knowledge as required.

The team only have a few days to decide if they can attend the World Championships in Kentucky, with some serious fundraising required if they do to meet the $3500 per person cost.

For more information on how you can support the House of Science robotics team, please contact Carl Acton on 07 571 0711.

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