Battle of the bots

Parklands Colledge pupils Noah Kemp and Boheng Zhu are Team Robodog, which will compete in the World Robot Olympiad (WRO) International final competition this week. They have built a self-driving car that can navigate a course of randomly placed red-and-green markers using Raspberry Pi technology.

Two Parklands College robotics teams, TechnoBlade and Robodog, will represent South Africa in the World Robot Olympiad (WRO) International final competition this week.

The online competition starts from Thursday November 18 and will run until Sunday, November 21.

Only five teams have been selected to represent South Africa this year, and this is the seventh year in a row that Parklands College has represented South Africa in this competition.

The respective teams had the task of building and coding physical robots to complete physical challenges.

This year’s WRO theme is “PowerBots – The Future of Energy”, where the robot challenges are all connected to the use of sustainable energy to combat climate change.

Team TechnoBlade, comprising Luan Odendaal, Matthew Francke, and Veer Atwaru, will represent South Africa in the Regular Elementary category. Their robot has to identify broken light bulbs in a home setting and replace them with energy-efficient bulbs and a smart-home device.

Team Robodog, Noah Kemp and Boheng Zhu, will represent South Africa in the Future Engineers category. They had to build a self-driving car that can navigate a course of randomly placed red-and-green markers using Raspberry Pi technology for the challenge.

Parklands College pupils Luan Odendaal, Matthew Francke, and Veer Atwaru make up Team TechnoBlade, which will compete in the World Robot Olympiad (WRO) International final competition this week.