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Hawke’s Bay Students Taking On The Globe At The Olympics Of Robotics

Four Hawke’s teenagers have been selected for the New Zealand Blackbots team to represent the country at the October FIRST Global Robotics World Cup in Geneva, Switzerland. The innovative robotics inventors from Karamu and Havelock North High School were chosen from their school teams who have met every Sunday to hone their skills for respective Regional and National competitions.

From Left to Right - Jimmy August, Mary-Jane Richards, Ella White, Ruby Langford

FIRST New Zealand representative and team mentor, Brendon White, acknowledged that Hawke’s Bay has a pool of keen kids that have been nurtured through robotics in primary school. “These students are graduating from building lego robots to building robots using the skills they learnt as youngsters. We are currently forming partnerships with local high schools with a focus on collaboration, rather than competition. One of FIRST’s core values is collaboration and this has been the basis of younger students' successes nationally and internationally.”

The FIRST Global event, that the team will be competing in, is back after a two year hiatus caused by the pandemic. The Hawke’s Bay youngsters will be supplied a standard kit of parts to design and assemble a robot to complete tasks in a themed game. The theme of the game is based on real life challenges faced by global governments. Students must be able to build and code a robot from scratch.

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Throughout the competition, they will join forces with other teams’ robots in the spirit of cooperation in an “Olympics”- style experience unlike any other. “Participants will see how they can compete to each provide better solutions, but more importantly, how they can work together. We’re all on the same team. We’re all competing with the same global challenges.

The FIRST Global Challenge enables kids around the world to all participate in solving problems, and cooperate with each other to solve the world’s problems,” said FIRST Global Founder and renowned inventor Dean Kamen.

While this is the first time the team will be competing using a new style of robot they are by no means inexperienced with robotics or competing at the highest level. Jimmy August (Ngāti Porou, Te Whānau-ā-Apanui) is already an international robotics winner after being a member of the Blackbots team that came 2nd at the 2019 FIRST Lego competition in the USA. Mary-Jane Richards (Ngāti Porou, Ngāti Kahungunu) was a member of a Hawke’s Bay team that were 2020 National FIRST Lego champions. Her trip to Texas with the Blackbots fell short due to the pandemic travel restrictions. While Ella White (Te Ātiawa) and Ruby Langford are relatively new to robotics, they have been previously identified in sporting codes for regional development programmes and have experience of competing at a high level.

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