Robotics teams set sights on world stage

A Cork secondary school is raising money to help send three teams of talented STEM students to the US for the VEX Robotics World Championship.

Three of the four robotics teams at Kinsale Community School recently secured a place in the prestigious global competition which runs from 6-8 May in Dallas, Texas.

The teams, each made up of transition year students from the county Cork school, secured three top prizes at the VEX Robotics Irish Nationals held at MTU in February.

The awards bagged by the brilliant Cork students were the Excellence Award, the Tournament Champions Award, and the Judges Award.

They now hope to go and compete on the global stage where they will go up against 600 of the best teams in the world. To help achieve this dream, they have set up a GoFundMe page, ‘Donate to help Kinsale Vex Team fund Vex World Championship’ with a target of €7,000.

The competition will see teams and their robotic creations from around the world go head to head across a huge variety of events and challenges. One of the main events at this year’s competition is the High Stakes challenge which sees two red and two blue teams work together to place rings on mobile goals during two-minute matches. The competition starts with a 15 second autonomous period, programmed by students themselves, followed by the driver control section, which will test the students’ skills in precision, strategy, and teamwork.