The Isle of Man Code Club recently held the first edition of the National Robotics Championship, a contest where students were invited to build robots with Lego Mindstorms and compete against one another. The challenge chosen was a Robotics Sumo contest, where robots have to push each other out of a ring to be declared the winner.

The contest was announced in October and was open to all students in the Isle of Man. A number of individuals expressed interest and had been meeting every Saturday at Code Club to work on their project and perfect their robots. Building a robot was only part of the challenge however; each participant also had to program tactics for their robots. Each robot had first to find its opponent, then find a way to manoeuvre its opponent out of the Sumo ring.

Five contestants made it to the Championship Final, which was held at the end of November, where the robots took part in a number of contests designed to discover which was the best robot.

The competition was intense, with robot pitted against robot, cheered on by the contestants and their supporters. But at the end of the day there could only be one winner, the creator of a robot that could better all others in the ring. And that winner was Hollie, aged 9, with her robot named IDK.

As sponsor of the contest, Bluewave Communications Ltd provided a prize for the winner, consisting of a 4-wheel drive robotic car driven by a Raspberry Pi which can be controlled over Wifi or mobile data. It is designed to be easily hackable and can be used for a number of projects.This was presented to Hollie after winning the contest.

Ryan Gilmour, director of Bluewave Communications Ltd said “It was a pleasure for us to supply a prize for this contest. This type of contest is a great way to encourage students of all ages to get interested in technology and we are proud to be part of it.”

Owen Cutajar, founder of Code Club added “It’s fantastic to see the energy and intellect that these students have poured into their projects. It wasn’t an easy challenge and Hollie did a magnificent job in beating all the others. We hope to be able to run this again next year to give opportunity to more contestants to take part.”

If you want to learn more about Code Club, please visit http://codeclub.im for more information.