End-Tech, a talented team of five students from Endon High School in Staffordshire have emerged victorious in their regional competition. This outstanding win now ensures their place at the inaugural first Lego League UK National Final. The team displayed incredibly impressive coding and robotics programming skills. Made up of members James, Malachi, Ethan Saunders and Owen, they went above and beyond other competing teams, including another group from Bradford.
The panel of judges designed a number of challenges as part of the regional competition. Teams were required to construct and program robots to score points through a variety of tasks, both individually and collaboratively. 2. End-Tech Despite shaky hardware, End-Tech’s colour sensors were a cut above the competition, giving the bot more versatility in contest gameplay. Their performance in the robotic tasks was even more impressive. Their full presentation and detailed plans for their project scored them big points.
This win is End-Tech’s second-straight win at this level. In doing so, it cements their place as a top competitor in the ever-competitive world of Lego robotics. Malachi noticed that this year’s competition was much more difficult. For his part, he added, “The teams are stronger this year,” pointing to the incredibly competitive landscape they faced.
The team spent hundreds of hours in and out of school programming and iterating their robot. From their bold—and sometimes reckless—design visions to tactically striking various compromises to simplify complex interactions, their upgrades were on a large scale. “We’ve swapped to a new coding software that uses Python so it’s much more accurate than it used to be,” said Malachi. Owen shared some interesting insight with us about their robot’s design and aesthetic. He added, “This time, we’ve developed a completely different robot with color sensors, so it’s a lot easier to use.
Having secured a dominant victory at the regional contest, End-Tech will now go on to represent Staffordshire at the national tournament in Harrogate. Our first FLL UK National Final should be a real corker! The best teams from around the nation will battle it out for national recognition and bragging rights.