SARAO News

Four teams from Carnarvon High School was selected to go through to the National Robotics competition to be held on 29 September 2018 at the Tshwane University of Technology.

The teams were selected after competing in the Senior High category of the Northern Cape SKA Robotics Program’s first World Robot Olympiad Northern Cape Provincial Competition at Carnarvon High School on 18 August 2018.

The World Robot Olympiad incorporates science, technology, education and robotics bringing together young people from all over the world to develop their creativity and problem-solving skills through challenging and educational robotics competitions.

Two teams from the Junior High category – Team Revolution and Team Guardians; and two teams from the Senior High category, Team Sharp Shooters and Team Cyber Assassins, went through to the National Competition.

The team members from Team Revolution were Shirwill Strong, Thurlo Maritz and Chevandré Tieties; while Li-yono van Wyk, Giovanni Brown and Juwaid Kammies were part of Team Guardians.

The Sharp Shooters team members were Dyllan Goeiman, Colin van der Ross and Brandon Sawall; and the Cyber Assassins consisted of Mbusa Mpanza, Graeme Snyman and Zainaldo de Bruin.

They were among 29 teams which participated in the competition from 13 schools in the province, which included the Nico Bekker Intermediate School, Brandvlei Primary school, Van Wyksvlei Intermediate School, Delta Primary School, JJ Booysen Primary School, Carnarvon Primary School, Brandvlei High School, Klein Mier Primary School, Floors High School, William Pescod High School, Rietfontein Combined School, Carnarvon High School and Williston High School.

The competition was hosted by the SARAO Schools Outreach team, under the Human Capital Development Programme, together with the World Robot Olympiad organising committee.

The 29 teams participated in four different categories, namely Senior High (16 – 19 years old), Junior High (13-15 years old), Explorer Junior and Elementary (7-12 years old) and WeDo (under 10 years of age).

Teams in the Senior High category had to make a robot that can bring different kinds of food to the correct destinations by appropriate ships and a robot that can equip the ships with temperature controllers that keep the different kinds of perishable foods on board the ships in the desired temperature range during transportation.

In this category, the Sharp Shooters raked in the Gold Prize, while the Cyber Assassins clinched the Silver Prize.

The Junior High teams had to build a robot that could gather data on the soil quantity of the fields of different farms and use this data to plant different seedlings depending on the soil quality.

In this category, Team Revolution won the Gold Prize and Team Guardians the Silver Prize.

The Explorer teams’ mission was to create a robot that could help reducing food waste. The task of the robot was to sort food products according to their looks and expiration dates and transport the sorted foods to places that could make use of the food instead of wasting it, for example dumping the non-sellable food in a landfill.

In the Elementary section Team Meerkat Rocks from Carnarvon Primary School won Gold; Coding Champs, also from Carnarvon Primary School won Silver, while the Space Breakers from the JJ Booysen Primary School in Loxton walked away with the Bronze Prize.

The Junior section saw Team Wall E win Gold, the Geeks Silver and the Red Bats from the Kimberley district won the Bronze Prize.

Each WeDo team had to build and program a WeDo 2.0 robot that the team could use to complete a series of tasks within a Game Table. The tasks were to collect and sort four pieces of fruit placed on a Game Mat and transport the fruits to different locations depending on their appearance. Each team used their robot to perform the tasks within two minutes.

In the WeDo category team Pixley from Carnarvon Primary School won Silver, while the Turbo Willies from Nico Bekker Primary School in Williston; and the Lego Meerkatte from Van Wyksvlei Intermediate School shared the Bronze Prize.

The competition was a seven-hour event in which the senior and junior high teams had to rebuild and program their robots within a two-hour period.

The judging panel consisted of SARAO staff members from the Klerefontein office and teachers from the schools that participated.  The teams were given two rounds in which to score points, and each round had two minutes for each team.

Invited guests and members of the audience included Norman van Wyk, Executive Mayor of the Kareeberg Municipality, Caven de Vries from the Pixley ka Seme District, Bennett Johannesen, the Information and Communications technology coordinator from the Upington District Department of Education, parents, educators, students and members of the communities.

Read more about the competition on Facebook