By Casey Neill
Dandenong North students took on the world at a robotics competition in Denmark.
The Roborannas from Wooranna Park Primary School finished 12th out of 118 teams at the First Lego League Open European Championship.
Nine students built and programmed a robot to perform specific tasks and competed in the Australian First Lego League Championships in December.
The judges invited them to head to Aarhus, Denmark, in May.
They set up an online appeal for donations to pay for the trip and received enough community support to follow their dream.
Eight students made the trip including 11-year-old Hafiz.
“It was really exciting,” he said.
“It was the first time most of us went to Europe. One of our teammates had never been overseas before so he was really excited.”
Fiona, 11, said that as well as the robot tasks, each year’s contest had a different theme for a research project.
This year’s was animal allies and the Roborannas looked into concerns about how elephants are treated in circuses.
Victor, 11, said their robot completed about 17 missions in the two minutes and 30 second timeframe, including lifting Lego bricks and moving plastic animals.
“All the other robots were so big. The others were big but not accurate,” he said.
Fiona said the school was preparing a new team and a new robot for the next competition.
Roborannas robot in action.
