Meet AIS’ Botball Boys

May 11, 2017

Seven Secondary School students went to the Botball Competition in Sofia last month. The Botball Educational Robotics Program engages students in a team-oriented robotics competition and exposes them to an inquiry-based, learn-by-doing activity that appeals to their hearts as well as their minds.(*)

The ‘Botball’ tournament was our second robotics competition this year, after ‘Lego League’. It is the second year that our school is competing in it. It was held in Sofia, Bulgaria from 23-28 April.

The lead up to the tournament needed a lot of hard work and effort from our team. We came to school one hour early every Monday and Wednesday just to work on building the robot and it was quite difficult. Our team consisted of 7 boys (Rohan, Naivedhya, Morven, Meet, Floris, Armaan and Xiaoyun). We started off with learning how to program the robot in ‘C’ language.

The tournament wasn’t just about making robots and programming them, but we needed to hand in other pieces of work too; we needed to submit a research paper, forms of documentation and we also had to make a presentation to show the judges what we had accomplished. We split the jobs amongst us to work efficiently.

Going to Sofia, Bulgaria was a great experience for me and the whole team as we learned a lot in the Sofia Tech Park where the competition was held. We interacted with other teams and they were nice enough to help us. Honestly, our robot did not work as planned and whenever we got extra time we tried to improve it. However, I was happy that, as a team, we did not give up, and made the most of our experience. Outside of the competition we had the opportunity to explore the city of Sofia. Overall it was a great experience.

by Rowan M.

(*) Source: www.botball.org