Teens from Grantleigh and Meridian Cosmo City schools, walked away with gold and silver medals respectively at the World Robot Olympiad (WRO) national finals held in Pretoria on 10 September.
Following the announcement, Curro Grantleigh will be proudly travelling to New Delhi, India, in November to compete in the WRO world finals.
The WRO is a non-profit organisation founded in 2004, comprising more than 50 member countries, and involving more than 20 000 teams competing in the challenges each year. The 2016 “Rap the Scrap” theme is focused on recycling, which calls for contestants to build robots that can reduce, manage, and recycle waste. Participants built their robots using Lego components.
The Natal-based Curro Grantleigh team comprises Bonga Gumbi and Dominique Spies who competed in the “regular category”.
The team was instructed to make a robot that organizes (picks up) sorted waste into recycling containers at a recycling plant. The robot had two minutes to complete the challenge and the team had to ensure the robot did not damage the recycling containers.
“I had a team that went to Qatar last year. This year I have a senior team qualifying for the world finals in Dehli,” said Alan Lewis, a robotics teacher at Curro Grantleigh.
Spies, a 16 year old grade 10 learner at Curro Grantleigh, said at first the robot was struggling but in the second round it came through. Spies’ 15 year old grade 9 teammate, Gumbi, mentioned one of the challenges they faced at the WRO was the mats that the robot was operating on – they were different to the ones they had at school.
“We changed the program a bit and we succeeded,” said Gumbi adding that the trip to India was a “lifetime opportunity”.
Meridian Cosmo City, a sister school to Curro Grantleigh, won silver after participating for the first time in the WRO. The silver-medalist team was made up of grade 6 learners Tshimologo Mafokosho and Rethabile Moeketsi, who participated in the “open category”.
Mafokosho and Moeketsi’s robot, “Mrs Kling”, was designed to aid in the challenge of cleaning littered caves. As some of the cave areas are too tight and inaccessible for humans, “Mrs Kling” has been built in such a way that she can embark on cave conservation endeavors by collecting litter and rubble in spaces that cannot accommodate humans.
The two also had the rare privilege of recently testing their robot at the Rising Star cave system where human ancestor Homo Naledi was discovered. Mafokosho and Moeketsi’s project was judged second to an electronic bin designed by Greenside Primary, a former model C school in Johannesburg, which walked away with gold at the competition.
“I am very happy with the achievement. This is just the best moment so far,” said Mafokosho. Moeketsi said he was also happy with their achievements adding that it was a very good experience. “Next year we will continue,” Moeketsi said.
Meridian Cosmo City Primary School Operational Head, Swarts Sibanyoni, said he was very proud of the Meridian Cosmo City team. H
e said his school would have sent more than just one team to compete in the World Robot Olympiad if it had more robotics components. Other schools with resources to do robotics sent more teams to the WRO.
Tony Williams, Curro’s project manager of IT and Robotics, added that Curro’s robotics teachers were getting stronger, and this enhanced Curro’s curriculum. Robotics has been taught as a subject from Grades R – 6 at Curro schools since 2011.
It has led to annual Robotics Competitions which encourage Curro learners to explore the world of coding in a fun and rewarding way, and in a manner that provides an interactive learning platform and creates excitement in the classroom.
The Curro schools that participated at the WRO included Woodhill College, Curro Hazeldean, Mount Richmore, Embury, Curro Aurora and Curro Langebaan. Woodhill College was awarded a bronze medal at the national competition while competing in the “explorer category”. Williams said Curro had 14 teams at the WRO national finals in Pretoria.
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