Students fly the green flag at world robotics contest

A group of north Cork students has traded the Rebel County for Orange County this week as they carry the green flag into a world robotics competition in California.

The nine first, second and third-year students at Davis College, Mallow, were part of a team that won out, over seven other Cork schools, in a contest that challenged their skills at building, programming and testing their robots.

But rather than a traditional ‘robot wars’ encounter in which machines set out to destroy each other, the goal is for pairs of teams to scores points by picking up sacks and dropping them in designated play areas.

Now they will face almost 400 teams from around the world as Ireland’s first ever representatives at the VEX Robotics World Championships.

The local event, held in November last, was organised by the Cork arm of EMC, which provided mentors to each school, and will be expanded nationally this year.

With EMC’s support and help from Cork Institute of Technology and a range of local sponsors, the team of nine — whittled down from 23 who competed at Cork City Hall — has been busy during lunch breaks and after school improving their robot. “They scrapped the first two and went for a redesign. Ours is inspired by the mechanics of a combine harvester,” said teacher Carol O’Sullivan.