By CASEY NEILL
DANDENONG High students shocked themselves with their success in a national robotics competition.
Teacher Wei Yuan Xin ran a robotics class at the school for the first time last year and didn’t expect his team would be Tournament Champion at the VEX Robotics World Championships qualifier.
“We went there for education. We wanted to learn from everyone else,” he said.
The four Year 10 boys competed against 12 other teams in the Nothing But Net challenge at Forest Hill College in Burwood East on 5 December.
They created a robot to score goals with tennis balls.
“We were surprised to find that after nearly every qualification round we were ranked number one,” Mr Xin said.
But they almost didn’t make it to the arena. Their robot was half an inch longer than the allowed dimension so they turned to a hacksaw just two hours before the competition started.
“We chopped it off. We were lucky,” Mr Xin said.
“Team work makes a really important difference.
“This was one of the best-organised teams.”
Team members Manilka and Nivindu said they viewed studying robotics as a starting point for engineering careers.
“You can’t judge a book by its cover,” Nivindu said.
“Our robot looked horrible but it did the job and we won.”
They went on to compete at the Asia Pacific Robotics Championships at the Melbourne Showgrounds on 17 December but didn’t walk away with any prizes.
But Manilka said it was a chance to meet people and find ideas.
“We did come first out of Australia, and that’s a big achievement,” he said.
