Inside King's-Edgehill School
Some readers of this article may recall that last February the King’s-Edgehill School Robotics Team did outstandingly well at the Regional Robofest Tournament held at Acadia University. At that event, KES teams earned first, third, fifth and seventh place out of 37 teams in total from across Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island. The top four teams from this tournament qualified to compete at the World Championship at Laurence Technological University (LTU) in Southfield, Michigan; however, due to the impact of COVID-19, the World Championship event had to be cancelled.
In August, the Robofest organizers at LTU announced their intentions to hold the World Championships online via Zoom. All teams from around the world that had qualified in regional events, like the one at Acadia University, were invited to participate in this multi-day experience.
This past Saturday the KES robotics team took part in the first part of this event, a game entitled “BottleSumo”. Students competed against teams from such places as India, the United Arab Emirates, the United States, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Mexico. Their goal was to design, construct, and program autonomous robots that would push three 1-kilogram bottles off a table as fast as possible. Although the results are still being calculated at LTU, I was extremely proud of how both the team of River Qi, Benson Lin, and Lonnie Luo and the team of Amy Zhang, Aaron Lu, Annie Yu, and Angela Du (2020) performed. These teams are now preparing for the next game, RoboGolf, which will take place on October 10.
I give a big thank you to Hannah Sinclair, Michelle Belliveau, Chris MacLean and Derek Bouwman for being the official judges of the event. The time and effort these extraordinary educators put into preparing and accomplishing the running of this event is considerable, and without them it would not have happened. I would also like to extend a big thank you to alumnus Margie (Pattison) Rock (1962-63) and her husband Ken: two great friends of the robotics program at King’s-Edgehill School. Last spring, after learning about the students’ success at the Acadia event, Margie and Ken surprised us with a generous donation that allowed us to purchase all the materials we needed to prepare and participate in the World Championship event.
Keep an eye out for the details to come on how the KES robotics team does in the World RoboGolf Championship challenge!
