Vex Robotics Offaly Competition

Robotics Midlands Regional Competition 

Last Thursday 8th February we took part in the Vex Robotics Midlands Competition. Along with 15 other schools we put everything we have been preparing for into play.

Coolanarney NS secured a place in the All-Ireland Championships in Cork at the end of the month. 

We played 9 team match games. Each game we played with another school - different school each time. This is where both teams had to work together to score the highest amount of points as possible. The two teams had to communicate with each other who was going to score what, what can you robot do, what can't it do etc. The children performed really well in this portion of the competition. 

The next part of the competition was the Coding/Programming and Driver skills portion of the competition. We had the robot already coded (over the past number of weeks) to play the game. We placed the robot in the starting position, pressed play and the robot played the game from the programming we put together. Then we had a driver skills match where we played the game on our own. Two from the class played the game to aim to score the highest score possible. 

It was a really enjoyable day and the children performed so well. We placed 6th place overall in the competition when all the points were added together. In the driving skills and Coding/Programming portion of the competition we placed 2nd. And it was this 2nd place ranking that helped us secure a place in the All-Ireland Championships in Cork at the end of February. This is a great achievement for the children and the school. All the hard work paid off.

Roll on the All-Ireland Championships on the 28th February in Cork!!!