Robotics National and World Finals

8 April 2022

Having been able to get back to full competitions for Robotics this academic year has seen great success for the Stowe teams.

The first team qualified to the UK National Finals through the Regional Competition at Stowe, the second and third teams qualified through a win and an Excellence Award (Best Robot) at a Regional in Nottingham. Setting us up to take three of our four teams to the National Finals in late April.

These wins also allowed us to attend the World Qualifying event for the UK. This event was the toughest we had this year and the standard of the competition was extremely high. Our teams did well and ended up paired with each other going into the playoffs, they lost their Quarter-Final match to the eventual Winners of the event.

Our Fourth/Fifth Form led by William Woodmansee (Fifth Form, Winton) and Barnaby Titmus-Mather (Fourth Form, Cobham) scored extremely well in the skills side of the competition. This is where the team must score as many points as possible playing solo, driving for 1 minute and then running an autonomous code for 1 min. The team’s performance ranked them Fourth in the UK (out of the approximately 250 teams that compete) for Skills runs. This performance was enough for them to gain one of the 11 places available to the World Finals in Dallas, Texas.

The World Final sees 800 teams from around the World come together to compete for the World Champion title. The game will be the same game that has been played all season where they must collect heavy bases, add rings to them and balance robots and bases on a see-saw platform. All three teams are now rebuilding and improving their robots for the National Finals with the Fourth/ Fifth Form team also preparing for the World Finals a few weeks later in early May. We will be flying out with Senior members of the team supporting William and Barnaby.

This is a huge opportunity for our pupils and sees them competing at the forefront of STEM subjects on a World stage in the largest International Robotics Competition with over 30,000 teams Worldwide. Through the process, they learn to use the engineering process, design, problem-solving, coding and building to best compete. They also must work with other teams from different schools forming alliances and team strategies.

After the World Finals, the new game for the 2022-2023 season will be revealed and the design and building process begins again. This is an ideal time for new team members to join, and like our current members, they too will have a shot at the Robotics National and World titles on offer.

Paul Thompson, MiC Robots