RoboCon dreams big for fourth year

RoboCon is a free, student-led, and fully accessible robotics competition aimed at GCSE students run by the Robotics Society at Hills Road Sixth Form College. By providing a kit containing all the equipment necessary to build a simple robot, our students encourage robotics enthusiasts from local schools to create their own robot as simple or complex as they would like. Support is available from Hills students throughout the build-up to the tournament, and the event itself is a robotacular droidfest of mecha-magnitude.

RoboCon 2023 began back in October 2022 with a game concept developed out of a Philip K. Dick story. “Do androids dream of electric sheepdogs?” is a sheepdog trials-themed game in which the goal is for a team’s robot to herd sheep, represented by cubes, into their pasture or pen. As the competition approached the work intensified, and students worked diligently to build the most efficient and eye-catching machines they could.

The event saw intense competition from a veritable fleet of robotic shepherds, all programmed for one thing: herding electric sheep. The overall winners were Bottisham Village College, with second and third place going to Trumpington Community College and King’s Ely respectively. The Frontier Innovation Prize went to Cranbrook School, The Jeb_ Prize was awarded to Sawston Village College, the highly coveted ‘Never Gonna Give Ewe Up’ prize sits proudly in the digital trophy case of Bottisham VC, whilst the CMR Core Values Prize now resides in the mainframe at King’s Ely.

The Hills Road Robotics Team would like to thank this year’s sponsors Frontier, CMR Surgical, The Technology Partnership, and Microsoft for keeping the android’s dreams alive.

To learn more about RoboCon, and the Hills Road Robotics Team’s amazing work, see below: