Robocup!

A few Sundays ago, the Robocup competition was held at Linwood College. Robocup is a competition where you program a robot to compete in a category such as: Theatre (program a robot to perform a story or dance), Rescue (program a robot to get the can out of an “acid spill”, or Soccer (program the robot to play soccer against another team).

Most of the teams except for one team from Selwyn House competed in Theatre (Eugene and the Eugeniuses competed in Rescue), and Selwyn House did amazingly well! There were many entries into the Theatre competition, ranging from dinosaurs to Hakas to 70s songs. In Robocup, there are two parts to your entry- an interview about your progress, the programme for your robot and showing the parts of your robot that your team has made, and then there's the performance/ round/ match (depending on what you're competing in).

At 2:30 it was the prize giving. Selwyn House claimed all three places. The Battle of the Basilisks came 3rd (Harriet E, Amelien and Emma), Mickey Mouse Clubhouse came 2nd (Enya and Holly), and the Bananananananananananananananas (Hana and I) came 1st! Anyone in the top three places could go to the Robocup Nationals, hosted in Dunedin.

A few weeks later, the three teams went down to Dunedin for the Robocup Nationals. Selwyn House did very well there too! Battle of the Basilisk was 2nd behind a team from Auroa School, and the Bananananananananananananananas came 3rd with Gangsta Piggies. All the teams had lots of fun (and a trip to the chocolate factory!).

To learn more about Robocup, visit http://www.robocupjunior.org.nz/ :)

Hattie

Minimakers at the MakerCrate!

The Makercrate on PhotoPeach

Every Wednesday, we go to the Makercrate in the Pallet Pavillion to do a workshop. What is the Makercrate? Well, the MakerCrate was created so that anyone can go there to 3D print, play with Hama beads, tinker with arduinos and laser cutters. We both love the MakerCrate- we are both very techy. Here is a PhotoPeach of some of the things we’ve created.

Bridget McKendry runs the MakerCrate. She’s also very techy and geeky. Each week, we work on a different project- so far, we’ve done 3D printing and Hama beads. This week, we are going to make a light up redstone ore that glows when on a platform. We really love the MakerCrate- come and visit Bridget and her volunteers at the MakerCrate. The MakerCrate is open 7 days a week.

What’s your favourite project? Tell us in the comments below. We will keep you updated on the sessions each week.

By Enya and Hattie

Nao Robotics

Nao At Robotics

On Friday after school, the Robotics club had four special guests come in. Two of them were human, and the other two were... well, humanoid. Both of us were in awe- two people from Science Alive had brought it two Nao robots (if you want to know what a Nao is, click here). We both love Nao robots because they have a massive range of capabilities. They showed us some demonstrations of what a Nao can do. Here is a montage of some of the clips we took:

After they showed us the capabilities of a Nao robot, we got to program some simple things on the Nao. We worked on a blue Nao called Freddie. We managed to get it to recite the first few lines of Star Wars, say our names using voice recognition and get it to say the first verse of “Do You Wanna Build A Snowman?”. We all had lots of fun, and they are coming back this Friday- We have plans for robot Gangnam Style!

By Hattie and Enya