Student Robotics Final 2011 demonstrates amazing ingenuity of school teams

The final of this year’s Student Robotics event was a day of triumph and disaster, as 15 teams from 14 schools, from as far away as Grenoble, came together for the final showdown at the University of Southampton.

Each team had designed and built a robot able to navigate a course littered with other robots and red bean cans which had to be collected to gain points. In a number of different challenges the robots could amass additional points by completing different manoeuvres. The robots were fitted with sensors systems, including vision and distance sensors.

As always, the day was magnificently organized and administered by the Student Robotics team, based in ECS-Electronics and Computer Science, and including University of Southampton alumni who have themselves been part of Student Robotics over the last six years. The final challenge takes place in a specially constructed arena in The Cube at the Students' Union.

After a gruelling day including 32 matches in a league scenario followed by an exciting knock-out stage, Taunton’s College Southampton were declared the winners, snatching the title from previous winners Peter Symond’s College Winchester.

Prizes were presented to the winning teams by Professor Neil White, Head of ECS-Electronics and Computer Science, who congratulated all the teams on their hard work, enthusiasm, and imaginative use of technology over the preceding seven months which, he commented, were some of the key qualities that were needed in the future by the UK engineering industry.

Each of the schools taking part in the competition received regular mentoring from a member of the Student Robotics team, helping them to design, build and programme a robot to take part in the competition. The winning team at Taunton’s College was mentored by ECS student Chris Kirkham, who is in the second year of an MEng Computer Science with Artificial Intelligence.

You can find out more about the challenge and the final event on the Student Robotics web site.

See our photostream of the day.

For further information contact Joyce Lewis; tel.+44(0)23 8059 5453.