Leading women
All-girl student robotics team is proud of EXPULSION Thomas Walland celebrates some high achieving Brentwood School pupils whose success in Robot Wars has transformed their career aspirations
Members of the Brentwood School Roboteers, the only allgirls robotics team to compete in the BBC’s Robot Wars in the UK, as well as in the King of Bots competition in China last year, have all changed their planned career paths as a result of the experience, including the youngest member of the team, who had planned to be a doctor and now has her sights set on biomedical engineering. The Roboteers’ experience saw them both knocked out and winning in equal measure as they competed in hotly contested heats in Shanghai and London. In China, an electrical fault brought their robotic clash to an end and in the UK they were knocked out twice and won twice, finally finishing in third place during their episode, qualifying them to compete in the 10-way challenge to claim the wild card in the final, held on Sunday 3rd December 2017. In the UK, only 9% of engineers are women, so to have an all-girl team representing the school in these competitions was truly exciting. As well as gaining valuable technical skills, the experience has significantly developed the students’ confidence – they’ve learned that they are always going to fail at some point and that by failing they are learning and can come back stronger each time. Taking part in these competitions also
requires the students to problem solve, think strategically and creatively, and to be able to outwit their opponents, all of whom are trying to sabotage their attempts. Students have to put themselves in the other team’s shoes and pre-empt their actions – it’s like high-speed chess on wheels! The team, all members of Brentwood School’s Robot Club, embarked on their international adventure when they featured on the BBC’s Robot Wars with their robot, EXPULSION. The 110kg robot, a new and improved model from one that appeared with another Brentwood School team on a previous series of Robot Wars, had a 3 horsepower pushing power, three times stronger than anything the team had built before. It was built out of military grade steel and designed to compete in a series of knockout rounds, aiming to immobilise their opponents’ creations. I must confess I am very proud of our students – the team had only built their first robot less than a year before! Prior to this, they knew nothing about robotics and had to research the subject before they were able to start building a fighting robot. The students all showed enormous dedication to the Robot Club, spending as much time as they could at the weekends and during their holidays designing and building robots. They put in huge efforts to improve the overall structure of the
Spring 2018
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