GRANTLEIGH School masterminds Bonga Gumbi and Dominique Spies won the senior high group (16-19 years) at the national robotics Olympiad held in Pretoria last week.
The duo have now been invited to be part of team South Africa and will head off to Delhi, India to compete at the World Robotics Olympiad on 25 to 27 November.
But this honour has come with added pressure.
The pair need to redesign and re-engineer their robot ‘Brute Force’ within 10 weeks to score better marks at the international event and are aware of the fact that no South African team has ever finished in the top 16.
But robotics teacher Alan Lewis has high hopes and aspirations for this year’s competition.
‘We know what is required to get the job done. We want to change the front of the robot to save time and make a number of engineering and programming changes,’ said Lewis.
The robotics club started in 2015, which gives the pupils an opportunity to use Lego equipment to build and design robots to complete certain tasks.
SASCOC and Mindsport officially recognised robotics as a sport this year.
All robotic clubs and associations receive a theme for the year, with the obstacle and task that each robot needs to complete autonomously.
When competing in competitions, one’s robot has two minutes to complete the task set out and gets marked out of 300 points.
‘We designed our robot to score 120 out of 300 to win nationals, and therefore need to modify it to score better at the Olympiad.’
Bonga (Grade 9) and Dominique (Grade 10) showed a keen interest for robotics and soon became partners in crime.
They designed their robot to complete this years task under the theme of recycling.
They attended the KZN regional robotics Olympiad in Hillcrest last month, where they won their age group and qualified for the nationals in Pretoria.
A robotics kit costs R10 000 and one needs up to two kits for spares.
The Curro group supports the school’s club and robotics is taught as a subject in Grades 4 to 8, therefore the school has 55 kits.
The robot body is built from Lego and contains a computer brain, light senses, infra red, ultra sonic, gyroscope and a compass.
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