Seatoun Aqua Bot Team off to the Nationals this weekend!

Aquabots experiences

For the first time ever, Seatoun school participated in the Aquabots challenge. The aim was for a team of students to build and test an underwater robot. The robot would attempt to complete various tasks underwater. Most of the tasks were themed around underwater wildlife rehabilitation such as invasive algae replacement, scallop removal and an obstacle course. It was very challenging for us and we tried our best but we were quite inexperienced. Archie and Lucas worked on building the bot itself while Kate and Madi soldered the circuit board and then we all came together at the end to put it together. Our robot was called HMS Perseverance, codename, The Yellow Submarine. Below are our various experiences.

Archie Mackenzie

The aquabots challenge was a pretty new experience for me. I haven’t done much in the field of robotics before (no kidding!), so it was all very new, exciting and sometimes daunting. The production was a big spanner in the works because it basically took up all but one of the sessions that we were supposed to be at Viva Stop working on the bot, so the rover only actually got finished one night before the competition, at 10:30pm. It kept breaking in the water, so that was pretty annoying. In the end though, we did pull through and come second, so that was cool.

Kate Mueller

This competition was hard, Madi and I were soldering the circuit board and we fried it once and had to restart. We finished making the circuit board at 9:30 the day before the competition. This competition was definitely a new experience for me. It was really annoying when at the competition one of our propellers wasn’t working so we could only go up and left which as you can imagine was quite a challenge but somehow we managed to come second which was… surprising! Overall I had a great experience working with Madi, Archie and Lucas.

Lucas Kendrick

This year's aquabot’s challenge was an exciting experience although I have never really done anything in the Robotics area. This was completely new to me so I had to learn a few things on robotics. Some of it was pretty challenging but I enjoyed building the bot and fixing it when it broke. Me and Archie had the job of building the frame and the wiring of the propellers. In my perspective some of the instructions were difficult to understand. We did the sessions (most of them) at Vivastop Wellington. When building the bot there were a few things we had to do like drilling holes in the frame, soldering the circuit board, wiring the motors and also building the controller. We made a few mistakes but got through them in the end. When it came to completion day some of the other bots looked good. This was going to be a tough competition. The competition was challenging in parts but we fixed the bot when it broke and finished in second place. Overall the competition was very fun and I am excited for nationals.

Madison Luping-Cowan

During this competition, I was extremely challenged because I don’t do much (or really anything) in the way of robotics. I worked with Kate on soldering and that was the first time I had ever soldered something and I found it quite challenging. We ran into a whole host of problems because of this, blew our first circuit board but ultimately managed to push through and persevered. During the competition day (around 12 hours after finishing the bot) there was always some sort of issue with the way it moved, but we always figured it out and stayed calm. I think it is quite amazing how much I have learned and done from this experience. This was an awesome opportunity and I look forward to nationals!