TWO Ripon Grammar School students have emerged as north of England robot masters in a major tournament.
Anna Bradley and Coral Watt were among the talented students who gathered at the University of Sheffield’s computer science department for the prestigious final of the Science and Technology Challenge.
The Year 9 students, who had already beaten off stiff competition from 20 other teams to triumph in their regional heat in York, were tasked with building and programming a mobile Lego Mindstorm robot.
Paired with two students from Sirius West Academy in Hull in the Yorkshire team, they were up against five other teams in the North and North-East final.
Following an inspirational talk by cognitive robotics expert Prof Tony Prescott, the students programmed their robots using Java software, enabling it to follow a dotted line and negotiate its way through a maze, using infrared and light sensors to avoid a series of obstacles.