On the weekend of 10th-11th, August , our Aquabots team comprising of Rakau students, Ben O, Conrad H, Talita S & Celia C travelled to the Selwyn Aquatic Centre to take part in the NZ Regional Aquabots finals run by the ‘Ministry of Inspiration.’ 

NZ AquaBots is the first underwater robotics programme for school-aged children in New Zealand. In this innovative underwater robotics program, school-aged children form teams to build an underwater Remotely Operated Vehicle and then compete in New Zealand-themed challenges. 

Our team had to complete underwater tasks, which involved anything from navigating an obstacle course to picking up items off the bottom of the pool. They also had to do a presentation about their build and complete a quiz about flood protection and climate change. 

After enduring many obstacles and problems along the way our students came third place overall in the regional competition! This is an particularly excellent result given this is only the first time Prebbleton students have taken part in this event. 

A huge thank you to the parents and families of our team for giving up their time to allow the students to attend this event. Also a big thank you to the organisers, the Nelson-based Ministry, for an extremely well-run and engaging event. The whole competition was a very valuable educational experience for all involved. After the success of this year’s event, we look forward to sending more children to take part next year! 

It was fun but very stressful! We had to overcome our motor falling off and it was really hard to achieve perfect buoyancy in order to pick up the objects. We all learned a lot, as we were doing the challenge for the first time but we would definitely do it again! - Conrad & Ben 

It was difficult and frustrating at times however we worked well as a team to problem solve our way through every situation. I’m really proud of how our team performed. - Talita

Our motor stopped working part way through but we used trial and error, persevereance and great teamwork to overcome this. It was very challenging but we learned a lot! - Celia