National science week has come to town, and the students of Mandurah Catholic College have been immersed in this year’s theme, “Drones, droids and robots.”
On Monday they enjoyed a demonstration of Minestorm and Star Wars robots by the IT and Endeavour Program students, and on Tuesday the year 9 science extension students competed flying drones.
On Wednesday the year 10 students engaged in robot wars.
“We’ve been working on the Edison robots in year 10 science extension for a couple of weeks, and now we’ve put Lego on top of them and we’re pitting them against each other to see who lasts the longest,” student Liam Doyle said.
The aim of the battle is to push the opponent’s robot off the mat.
“When you put them into sumo mode, they read a bar code, and once you press the play button, they move and sort of seek out the other robots with motion sensors,” Liam said.
Liam and his team mate Ray Stokes built their robot with long spikes, to prod and push at the opponent robot.
“They’ll probably snap off, but we’ve got a chain to it so it can still act as a weapon,” Liam said.
Science teacher Heather Brocklehurst said the school’s science extension program allowed students to go deeper into the STEM field.
“These guys have had the robots for the term, so they’ve been practicing, learning how they work, they’re going to be doing programming and things like that,” Ms Brocklehurst said.
“They can be more motivated, and hopefully go into careers in STEM in the future.
“It’s good fun as well… it’s heaps more practical stuff.”
Year 10 students Jackson Knight and Joshua Agaloos won the competition overall, taking home $50 between them, thanks to the success of their heavy-set robot Garry.
