St Aloysius students celebrate win in robotics competition

Six students in St Aloysius College, Athlone, are celebrating this week after scooping a major national title courtesy of their work designing and programming a robot! The innovative group received the Robot Performance award at the First Lego League Climate Connections competition last weekend in Galway, and in the process garnered €500 for their school as well as a specially commissioned trophy and medals. Transition years Darragh Glynn, Kevin Farrell, Darragh Egan, Evan Conway and Eoin Gately along with fifth year Mel Larkin spent the last six months working on the project, which involved putting together a practice board with various features linked to climate change for the robot to carry out different manoeuvres. The group also had to design and programme a small robot dubbed "Alo 1" for the Robot Missions challenge. 'It"s all to do with climate change and how it affects communities. The robot moves around the board and each function it completed earned us points. The board has different has different parts simulating problems associated with climate change,' Mel Larkin explained to the Westmeath Independent this week. 'We learned a lot climate change, how to design and programme a robot and about teamwork as part of the competition,' he added, while Darragh Glynn explained that the school were up against 17 teams who participated in the second year of the contest. The students expressed their thanks to their teachers Bill Kearney and Darragh Hurley and mentor Gerhard Terpelle for all their help and assistance with the award winning entry. Teacher Bill Kearney paid tribute to the hard work of group this week, adding that they have learnt a lot from the venture. 'There is a new Technology curriculum and robotics is part of it so this project directly links in to that. On a wider level it also links in to the science and technology needs of a knowledge based economy. The lads have learnt a lot, how to design a robot, programme a robot, earn points at the competition and keep a cool head in competition.' His teaching colleague Darragh Hurley agreed that the competition has been a very worthwhile experience for the Athlone-based students. 'It"s very helpful robotics is going on to the Leaving Cert curriculum so they can use the robot again. It"s all very well reading in the books but the practical aspect brings the learning to life. The competition was well run and very worthwhile from our point of view,' he added.' First Lego League is an initiative developed by Galway based software company SAP to promote science and technology among students, as they explore their own creativity and learn how to work in a team. The competition is also supported by Galway Education Centre.