End-Tech, an incredible team of students from Endon High School in Staffordshire, won a stunning upset victory at their regional Lego competition. This victory represents their second straight victory at this rung! Entrants traveled from as far as Bradford to participate in the contest. These kids had to engineer and program a robot to meet and conquer a gauntlet of challenges determined by the judges. This year’s contest was even more competitive, as team member Malachi commented that “teams are more awesome this year.”
With Malachi, James, and Owen on this five-member team, Mcmillion worked diligently on creating their robot. They put forth their best efforts while school was in session and beyond the final bell. In addition to their time spent working with code, they had time to do actual building in advance of the event. Their hard work paid off with an impressive pitch of their robot, which boasted high-tech features such as color sensors. Owen highlighted the advantages of this technology, stating, “We’ve got a whole different robot with color sensors this time, that makes it a bit easier to use.”
Throughout the competition, each of the teams accrued points for doing the best job on different tasks and challenges. As James put it, the experience was “nail biting,” capturing the high stakes, high stress excitement, and overall vibe of HACKTHEMACHINE. Their careful planning and ambitious design reaped the highest reward, enabling End-Tech to take first place.
Beyond the technical features of their project, the team took a notable step to improve their coding practices. Malachi explained, “We’ve swapped to a new coding software that uses Python so it’s much more accurate than it used to be.” This move played a big role in their robot’s superior performance in the challenges.
End-Tech has won the day! They will now go on to proudly represent Staffordshire at the first Lego League UK National Final later this year in Harrogate. Their success is a testament to their amazing technical ability. It represents the very real collaborative effort and dedication of each and every team member represented.