We are officially living in amazing times, as robots – once seen as inventions of the future – are now the reality of the present.
An exciting Minds Inspired FIRST Tech Challenge on 26 March saw approximately 80 students from five high schools participate in a robot battle royal at Camana Bay’s Arts and Recreation Centre. Titled ‘Freight Frenzy’, the transportation-themed match was won by an alliance between two teams from Cayman International School against John Gray High School and Triple C School.
Now, the Cayman Islands National Robotics team, curated from those students who competed in March, is heading to Geneva, Switzerland for the FIRST Global Challenge international robotics tournament. The members flew out on 10 Oct. with their carbon-catching robot ‘Mangrover’, which they custom-designed and built.
The global challenge is an Olympics-style event with a different theme each year. This time around, it is ‘Carbon Capture’, focusing on finding climate solutions to reduce the amount of carbon released into the atmosphere.
Teams from 180 countries will be competing in Switzerland, covering everywhere from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe. This is an extraordinary opportunity for Cayman’s team to demonstrate their skills on the world stage.
Mangrover
The team has spent hundreds of hours this summer engineering and programming a robot that can capture and store carbon ‘elements’ in a game that requires teams to manoeuvre balls to a central carbon ‘sink’. The result is ‘Mangrover’, named after nature’s answer to carbon sequestration. It is a robot that can scoop up balls and eject them 10 feet into the air to reach the storage target.
Coach Desmond White, who is the subject leader of design and technology at John Gray High School, has built a model of the competition course so that the team can practice operating the robot and tweak their design. Each member of the team – Alex Walters (15), Diamond White (16), Max Clarke (15), Michael Marzouca (16), Teejhan Hansraj (15), Marissa Wright (15), Kyah Morris (15), Drew Plania (14) and Adi Binoy (15) – has a designated role from designing, programming and driving the robot to communications.
“It has been absolutely inspiring to see the enthusiasm and camaraderie displayed by these students as they worked through the various stages of the engineering design process,” said White. “They demonstrated excellent teamwork and commitment throughout the various iterations of the design and can therefore be truly proud of the finished robot.”
Last Monday, a demonstration of Mangrover in action was given to Governor Martyn Roper. The robot was also on display at an event for sponsors, family and fellow students on Sunday, 9 Oct. before the team flew out the next day.
Seven students from four high schools are travelling with two coaches and Dart’s senior manager of education programmes Glenda McTaggart, who runs the programme as part of Minds Inspired. After the tournament, McTaggart has also arranged for the team to visit CERN, the European organisation for nuclear research, in Geneva.
To receive updates on the Cayman Islands National Robotics team’s progress at the FIRST Global Challenge, follow Minds Inspired on Facebook or Instagram. You can also watch a livestream of the competition at https://first.global/live from 13 to 16 Oct.
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