Robotics

Year 5 and 6 FIRST Lego League – Macquarie Park Regional

Last Saturday, the Year 5 and 6 FIRST LEGO League students were able to go to the first live event since 2019, hosted by Macquarie University. For each team, the day is made up of three matches and a 30 minute interview with judges, covering core values, their innovation project and robot design.

Team Starrie Skiies, Lily Dao (Year 5), Linh Dinh (Year 6) and Vivian Liu (Year 5), came home with the Motivate Award after they impressed the judges with their energetic innovation project.

Team Illusions, Cabrini Lee (Year 6), Allison Wang (Year 6) and Melanie Xu (Year 5) had a top score of 175 point on the day which is an incredible achievement. Team Technobrains, Georgia Friedel (Year 5), Grace Jacobs (Year 5), Dionne Jacobs (Year 5), Shreya Mahendra (Year 6) and Malaika Rasheed (Year 6) showed great persistence when their robot refused to work and froze.

The students had an amazing day and gave it their all. All six teams did their best and had plenty of fun in the process.

Jet Napton

Robotics Coach

Year 7 and 8 VEX V5 – Live Remote Skills Competition

On Wednesday 26 October, three Pymble VRC teams had the opportunity to compete in a remote event against other teams from around Australia in a Live Remote Skills event. This is an online competition in which teams compete in programming and driving matches. Robots are driven and programmed on a field at each team’s location, and teams are given one minute to score as many points on the field as possible through driving and programming.

For this event, we had our Middle School students playing against some high school students from robot academies and other schools. Our teams were nervous but were ready for battle. Team 65100E Berries in Space, Jenny He (Year 7), Celine Liu (Year 7), Olivia Moon (Year 7), Jessica Shi (Year 7) had an amazing programming code that saw their robot shooting and scoring two discs in the high goal, spinning rollers and using a ratchet system to throw a string and score more points. They used the same strategy for driving, and even though they were very nervous they managed to score the second highest score. This put them in second place, qualifying for Nationals in December.

Team 65100H Mia Squared, Mia Chan (Year 7), Ranalee Siriwardana (Year 7), Catherine Zeng (Year 7), Mia Zhang (Year 7), Nicole Jiang (Year 7) used a simple but reliable strategy. They did not score in the high goal, but they managed to score enough points to be in third place, also qualifying for Nationals.

Team 65100J Spanish Luigi, Jessica Zhai (Year 8), Jessica Xu (Year 8), Meimei Jiang (Year 8), Jocelyn Ying (Year 8), Liuyi Cai (Year 8), showed their excellent strategy and driving skills. They placed 4th in the ranking.

Cristhina Boni-Lavraitti

Robotics Coach