This year’s New Zealand Robot Olympiad was hosted at the Faculty of Engineering, with Dr Ho Seok Ahn as Chair, from July 9-19, where 250 school students from Year 1-13 were invited. Our future engineers enjoyed four individual games – line tracer, formula racing, battle cube, and battle soccer, and six group games – Mirosot robot soccer, creative robots, problem solving, robots in movies, cyber robots, and physical computing.
The Centre for Automation and Robotic Engineering Science (CARES), directed by Professor Bruce MacDonald, has been hosting this annual event since 2017, where selected students go on to participate in the International Robot Olympiad. Academic staff, including Professor Michael O’Sullivan, Professor Andrew McDaid, Dr. Morteza Biglari-Abhari, Dr Nitish Patel, Dr Seho Kim, Dr Dulsha Kularatna-Abeywardana, Dr James Tizard, Dr Jesin James, Dr Trevor Gee, and Dr Yuan Liu, judged the students’ presentations, and shared their experience and feedback with the young engineers.
Last year, 30 students were selected to compete in the International Robot Olympiad 2023 held in Greece last January, and Team NZ ranked 2nd in the world – with 21 Golds, 49 Silvers, and 12 Bronze medals. From the New Zealand Robot Olympiad 2024, 40 students will be selected to compete in the International Robot Olympiad 2024, which will be held in Busan, Korea next January.