After having success in the first phase, Robotics Mission, our successful science project connecting students from Azeri and British schools is going ahead full speed.
The second phase of the project involves 96 students and 12 trainers from eight schools in Azerbaijan and four from the UK. On 25 September 2005, trainers from schools in Baku, Sumgayit, Lankaran, Ganja, Sheki, Agdash, Quba and Ali Bayramli attended our training session on using and programming of LEGO robots. Eight teams, formed afterwards, have been working together with their UK peers, communicating through our online forums on the 2005 challenge called “Ocean Odyssey”.
On 20 December 2005 local teams competed at the Second National Robotics Tournament. The opening ceremony was at 10.00 in the ABU Arena Sports Hall.
In the first part of tournament students showed their project presentation about various problems related to ocean health, biodiversity and productivity.
The second part was the actual robotics challenge. Teams met in pairs; they had 2½ minutes for their robot to score as many points as they could by performing various tasks at the mission desk, like deploying a submarine, protecting the pump station, servicing a pipeline, releasing a dolphin and cleaning up a cargo shipping accident.
The four highest scoring teams, “Robo-sapiens” (Baku-Hayle), “Robosoft Reloaded” (Sumgayit-Callington), “Robocart” (Sheki-Tamarside) and “Albatross” (Aghdash-Ivybridge) passed to the semi-finals where they competed for the Final.
“Albatross” won the Champions Trophy after a memorable battle with “Robocart”. The Best Robot Design award went to “Robo-sapiens”, and the Best Presentation award went to “Robosoft Reloaded”
The Second National Robotics Tournament was a part of our British Science Week from 16-21 December 2005. Other events included our first ever Café Scientifique videoconferencing session and workshops by a British trainer on Physics and Space Science.
On 19 and 21 December 2005 in the Caspian Energy Centre Mike Grocott, a teacher from Callington Community College, our partner school, delivered master classes for about 200 Azeri school students and teachers on topics such as the Sun as a Star, Stars and Galaxies, Rockets, the Solar System etc.
Finally, four Azeri students from the winning “Albatross” team travelled to the UK to participate in the UK FIRST LEGO League Final, held at Henry Ford College at Loughborough University on 21 January 2006.
Together with their team-mates from Ivybridge Community College they achieved an amazing fifth place out of 25 participating UK teams. The team also won the Judges’ Ford Award for Innovation for the design of their robot and its attachments. They also won the Judges’ Special Award for special endeavour, technical understanding, presentation and team work.
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