Kickstart 2008

Here is an update of Student Robotics proceedings:

We officially launched the 2009 Competition on Thursday 25th of September with an all day event held at the University of Southampton. A total of Y Students arrived from X different local schools to sign up for the 2009 Games. In the morning we outlined the games their robots will have to compete in and showed them a documentary video of last years winning team.

The second part of the morning involved a fast-passed engineering challenge which saw the teams rush to design and assemble a ball launcher from a deliberately limited selection of materials (balloons,elastic bands, canes, cups etc.). During the hour long task we condensed a whole academic year. This meant teams had to stop building during the Christmas break (an unhealthy amount of mince pies), New year festivities, A Levels (a short trivia quiz) and the Easter break.Teams then brought their creations one by one into the quarter-size arena where they had five attempts to fire balls into the corner net.

By lunch time, all the students had a clear idea of not only the complexity and nature of the task in hand but also the relatively short period of time in which they have to design & build their robots.

The afternoon was a chance for us to inform the students of the help and technology available to them during this project. This consisted of four different presentations which the schools revolved around.These talks encompassed basic software skills, an introduction to Electronics, mechanical design aspects and project management. The latter was an opportunity for students to discuss their mistakes and experience from the morning's challenge.

Before leaving, most teams collected their mechanical kit (a selection of MDF, screws, metal work etc.) so they could get started straight away.

So with the competition successfully launched we are looking to manufacture and distribute the electronics kit as soon as possible and this is where we need your help. If we are to give students the longest amount of time to develop their robots we need to secure funding as soon as possible.

Christopher Cross,
Student Robotics President