About half a year ago, teachers familiarised themselves with the new features of the small robots, the mBots, during a training session, followed by a practical workshop for pupils and teachers in March. Recently, eleven high motivated student teams finally had the chance to demonstrate their programming know-how under competitive conditions.
To begin with, all the teams introduced themselves and presented the progress of their respective projects. The teams were then faced with the first competition task: ‘Watch out for obstacles!’. Here, they had to use sensors to detect obstacles and navigate around them. The next exciting challenge was to harvest a field using two mBots simultaneously. Next, they had to collect hay bales, and finally, the mBots had to find deer fawns. All the tasks could only be solved through precise programming of the robots. Only then were the small machines able to follow a black line, detect obstacles, and stop at the correct points. Many participants also learned that there are different (programming) approaches to reach the goal.
The 'BotsZilla' team from CJD Secondary School Versmold impressed in all disciplines and won first prize. The second prize went to the 'Technik Titans' team from Mariengymnasium Warendorf, and the 'Tweaker Team' from Gymnasium Harsewinkel was delighted with third place.
