Student Success - An Insight into Robotics

Student Success Robotics

“Oats Robotics” has celebrated its 10th year at Ōtūmoetai College. During these 10 years we have won the Robotics World Championship once, come second twice, won the Australiasia Championship and NZ national title a number of times.

Students meet on Saturdays to design, build, program and drive their robots as well as attend tournaments - called “scrimmages”. Students at all levels (years 9 to 13) are welcome to join with no previous experience required, and are given “on the job training” by more experienced members of the club. Although lots of learning takes place, the emphasis is on having fun while doing so.

As from next year, students will also have the option to participate in Robotics as part of their NCEA courses- in other words during school time as a regular curriculum course worth about 20 credits at each senior year level (11 to 13).These Robotics courses will be run by the Electronics Technology Department. Some great news is that the college has been granted 2 scholarships, worth $5000 each per year for the duration of your tertiary study, that will be available to students attending the Robotics course.

Deon Wessels, Teacher

“Oats robotics” is a club of passionate students with a wide range of experience; from our year 12s who’ve been with us for 4 seasons, to the year nines that just joined us last term. Here at Ōtūmoetai College knowledge is passed down from older students to the newcomers. Every Saturday morning

from 8:30 to 12:30 the Technology block is scattered with students hard at work building, programming, testing and engineering our robots to the best of our abilities. Around once a month, we journey up to Auckland where we push our robots to the maximum in scrimmage competitions against teams from other New Zealand schools. These scrimmages are huge learning opportunities for our teams as they make even small mechanical problems stick out. The week after a scrimmage is always very hands on as everyone knows what needs fixing next. The Vex Robotics Competition is great for teaching skills such as engineering and programming but even more prominent is the team building, collaboration and communication skills that are made. The environment in the club is very friendly and encouraging. Tournaments are especially great at promoting communication as to succeed in the elimination rounds you must make a strong ally. Alliance selection requires you to talk to other teams and promote your robot, to find a robot that you believe will best compliment yours. Every February the National championships is the ultimate proof of our efforts as the pressure is on to qualify for the Vex Robotics World Championship held in the USA. The biggest competition in New Zealand, with around 70 teams competing with their best efforts to prove their worthiness. Oats robotics has generally done very well on the national stage and has competed in the States numerous times in the past, most recently in 2019. The world tournament is both a fun and friendly event and an extreme, high stakes competition where every second team may be your enemy.

Robotics Students