EDUCATION and entertainment proved a popular combination over the weekend when 75 primary school children went to battle with their self-designed sumo wrestling robots at the Analog Devices Primary School Robotics Competition.
Students from St Patrick’s Boys National School in Limerick City emerged as overall champions of the STEM-inspired challenge which took place at Analog Devices Campus in Raheen.
Ten to 12 year olds from 24 schools across Limerick City and County were there early on Saturday morning to build and programme their robots before pitting their robotic creations against each other, sumo-style, that afternoon.
More than 100 supporters cheered on the children during the highly competitive event with points awarded for teamwork as well as design and innovation.
The St Patrick’s NS team of Fionn Ott, Bruno Ulej and Odhran Yanto took the top award with Kristiana Suares, Ellie Mai O’Dell and Óran Conlon from Thomond Primary School in the runners up position.
The aim was to promote STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) by giving primary school pupils a flavour of practical engineering skills. The children are encouraged to work as part of a team, express creativity, problem solve and have fun while learning key STEM principles.
Announcing the winners, Analog senior director Jim Nagle said they wanted to provide a fun and engaging hands-on learning experience that will encourage children to stay curious and enthusiastic for STEM subjects and the opportunities ahead.
Analog Devices opened registration to all primary schools with more than 120 pupils in Limerick city and county earlier this year. Each school that registered received a free Robotics workshop where fifth and sixth class pupils learn to build and programme a robot using Lego WeDo kits.
After building their robots in the classroom, each team competed for the chance to represent their school in the final.
Finals day began with a more advanced robotics workshop to further develop and build on their learnings from the first round of classroom-based workshops. A new robot challenge was set which tasked the students to design and programme a robot for sumo-wrestling.
Each team then played a series of matches in the pool stages with the top teams going forward to the play-offs. At the end of the showdown, the team with the highest points was crowned the overall winners.
Previous winners include Scoil Ide (2015), St Patrick’s Girls NS (2016), Our Lady Queen of Peace NS (2017), Killoughteen NS (2018), Scoil Mhuire Broadford (2019) and St Patricks NS Bruree (2020).
