Hi everybody, Shine TV have put together a program about us and are playing the team video (with different music as they can’t play the original due to copyright issues) on Shine TV tomorrow night, and again on Saturday and Sunday.

Homeschool team Free Range Robotics have won the New Zealand National VEX Robotics Championship for the second year in a row. They also scooped more than their fair share of other awards, winning the New Zealand Championship awards for Web Design (www.robotics.org.nz), the Think Award for Autonomous Programming, the Promote award for the best team video, the VEX Essay Award and the runner up for Programming Skills Award.

The VEX Robotics Competition is run throughout the world with over 2400 teams in more than 13 countries. The program was designed to encourage students to enter the fields of science, technology, engineering and mathematics. Dr Johan Potgieter, senior lecturer at Massey University School of Advanced Engineering and Technology, who instigated the VEX competition in New Zealand, said  “We have students now coming into engineering who have never thought of doing it… it’s really opened up a lot of opportunities for these kids.”

Each team has to design, build and program a robot to play a specific game. This year’s game is Clean Sweep, and the object of the game is for alliances of two teams (three for the finals) to obtain a higher score than their opponent’s alliance by moving as many balls as possible into the opposing team’s side of the field.