The North Devon Robotics Challenge 2023 is an event for Year 7 students at schools in the North Devon area. The event is sponsored by The IET, and supported by The North Devon Manufacturers Association, Firefly Robotics Educational Charity and STEM. This is the first time the event has been run, and the plan is to extend the event further in forthcoming years, initially throughout the IET Devon and Cornwall area.

The event is for teams of four pairs of students, who are presented with challenges, which they work on in their schools over a six week period, before coming together to compete against each other at a central location.

The North Devon area has a lot of small engineering companies, but engineering does not have a high profile in the area, and the result is that the engineering companies often struggle to recruit local people into engineering careers. The robotics challenge is aimed at getting young secondary aged students to see the fun and the challenges of robots, engineering design and programming.

The challenges

For the 2023 competition, there were three challenges based on Edison robots (www.meetedison.com), and one “fantasy design” challenge. The students were provided with a brief for the challenge, and worked on their designs at their schools in the weeks leading up to the competition.

The design challenge

The fantasy design challenge was very general. Tourism is a big part of the Devon economy. The challenge was to design a robot to help with some aspect of the tourism industry, and present their ideas to a judging panel.

The race challenge

The students were tasked with programming their Edison robot to navigate round a white race track with black borders. The students saw an example of what the race track would look like, but not the exact track for the competition. The challenge was to complete four laps of the track in the best time (limited to two minutes), or the furthest distance achieved if the time limit was reached.

The bean can slalom challenge

The students were tasked with programming their Edison robots to navigate a two metre long, half metre wide track, avoiding twelve bean cans placed on the track. The challenge was to complete the slalom in the shortest time, or the maximum distance achieved the course was not completed in the two minute time limit. 

The throwing challenge

Edison robots are compatible with Lego building bricks. The students were tasked with using their Edison robot, along with a Lego construction of not more than 150mm wide by 100mm high, to throw a Lego brick as far as possible.

The competition – Petroc College, Barnstaple

The competition took place on Wednesday 22^nd March at Petroc College, Barnstaple. The venue in the South West Institute of Technology building was a perfect environment for a friendly, fun competition, even allowing last minute changes to the robot programs.

All the teams taking part had a good balance of boys and girls, which in a healthy sign for the future, where only about 10% of professional engineers are female.

Unfortunately, one team had to drop out before the event, but the remaining teams from Park Community School, Barnstaple, Braunton Academy and South Molton Community College were most enthusiastic in showing what they had achieved with their robots and their fantasy designs. The teams took turns in getting their robots to perform their challenges, then, present their work to a judging panel. The robots performed well, but not always perfectly. Both organisers and schools learned a lot which can be improved next year.

The fantasy designs were similarly presented to a judging panel. It was interesting that all three teams designed fantasy robots to pick and collect litter. The judges commented that all three designs had some clever features and fitted the brief well. The final challenge was to use a pre-programmed Edison robot with a pin attached to burst as many balloons in a square arena, controlling the robot using a remote control handset.

At the end of all the challenges, the scores for the competitions and the judging were added up, and the overall winners of the event was Park Community School with 135 points, just two points ahead of South Molton Community College. Braunton Academy finished a few points behind, but can feel proud to have won the fantasy design challenge.

At the end of the event, first and second prizes, kindly donated by the Institution of Engineering and Technology were presented by organiser, Rob Scarr to Luke Stokes of Park Community School and Peter Nutkins of South Molton Community College.

For further information on the robotics challenge, please contact Rob.Scarr@ietvolunteer.org

Here's some photographs taken at the event