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StoweBots Take on the World

5 May 2016

Robotics

Those of you following the success of the StoweBots will know that after their short 2014-2015 season in which they made the National semi-final, they have gone on to much greater things in 2015-2016. Both the Junior and Senior teams qualified for the National Finals (there were 250+ teams competing across the UK, 40 made it to Nationals). At the National Finals both reached the semi-final, but ended up facing each other. The Senior team prevailed and went on to become National Finalists and claim their place among 500 of the world’s top teams at the VEX World Robotics Finals. The 2016 World Finals was officially the biggest robotics competition ever, setting a Guinness World Record with over 1,075 teams from 32 countries, and 20,000 people in the venue. The scale of the competition and venue was truly astonishing and beyond all expectations.

Over the three days of competition the team played ten qualifying matches in the hopes of making the playoff games. The team preformed incredibly well, holding its own in each match. Sadly the robot suffered some technical difficulties beyond our control. A change of CPU fixed the problem, but the losses put us further down the qualification ranking than we could have been. The StoweBots finished winning 4 out of the 10 games and were placed 56 out of the 100 teams in their group. However, every single game they played was close despite the difficulties. The other aspect that shows the strength of our performance was the SP score of the team. This is the total score that your opponents achieved in your games; the higher the score the closer and more difficult the games were. The StoweBots SP score was 1658 and tenth highest of the group. Also of the six UK teams that gained places at the World Finals the StoweBots results placed them as the third best UK team behind two teams that have been competing for five years.

Our pupils, Artura Subowo (Upper Sixth, Chandos), Stuart Milner (Lower Sixth, Cobham), Jonathan Reading (Lower Sixth, Grenville), Toby Lawrance (Lower Sixth, Cobham) and Anna Wilson (Lower Sixth, Queen’s), worked tirelessly to compete to the best of their ability. They threw themselves into all aspects of the competition, collaborating with other teams from various countries and assisting each other. Our competition was not without its trials and tribulations; however they never lost heart and kept going right to the very end. They were wonderful ambassadors for the School. This has been a valuable experience for our pupils including those who didn’t go with the team to the World Finals, Ben Barrett (Upper Sixth, Chatham), Laura Fras (Upper Sixth, Nugent) and Sam Lodge (Upper Sixth, Walpole), in terms of their personal growth and academic application. The competition takes in so many core elements of the Maths, Physics, Design, Engineering and Computer Programming curricula and applies it to something very real.

Moving on to 2016-2017, the pupils now face a new game and new challenges. We will once again compete with two teams, one team of Third to Fifth Formers and one of Sixth Formers. We have taken on a few new team members replacing Ben Barrett, Artura Subowo, Sam Lodge and Laura Fras who will be leaving Stowe this year after a fantastic year with the team. As we move forward we have learnt a lot from our first trip to the World Finals and will also be looking for sponsorship to help us with future success. Our aim is to once again make the National Finals and go on to the World Finals and represent the UK in 2017 at what will undoubtedly be an even bigger World Final.

Pictures from the World Finals can be seen here. 

Paul Thompson, MiC Robots