Elke van der Walt, Obey Munodawafa and Zainaaz Hansa joined forces to compete at the Gauteng South First Lego League Tournament, which was held in Newtown.
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“This was a regional tournament so all robotic teams in Gauteng that were building and programming their robots made out of Lego pieces and EV3 Lego Mindstorm were invited,” Munodawafa said.
The topic of the tournament was hydro-dynamics, meaning: water, innovative ways to save the water and the robot has to carry out missions.
According to the team, these missions included navigating the course, picking and carrying objects.
“We also needed to research and make posters about the robot and hydro-dynamics,” the team said.
“The name of our group and robot was Scibotron.
“Originally there were six learners in the group, but because some were still writing exams, they could not attend.
Munodawafa, who was in charge of building the robot, said as IT learners they were intrigued by the idea of building and programming their own robot.
“The first thing we did was to design Scibotron,” he said.
“Our aim was to make a robot that was small and easy to navigate around the course.”
Van der Walt said programming the robot was a challenge.
“It was a bit challenging, but I got used to the coding,” she said.
“We used a program called EV3 Lego Mindstorm, and in order for the best coding we needed Scibotron to be fully operational.”
Hansa researched the project.
“As a researcher I needed to find information about hydro-dynamics and the best ways to address the water problem,” she said.
“We came up with an extractor fan which could be installed on a Jojo tank.”
Although the three did not make it to the provincial and national rounds, they were still satisfied with the award they won, especially because it was their first attempt at this competition.
“As a team we learnt a lot about robots, current situations about water in South Africa and team work as well as working together while having fun,” they said.
“This was a big stepping stone or opportunity for us and we hope to try again next year.”
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