Witchford students bag four trophies at robotics competition

Students at Witchford Village College bagged four trophies at a robotics competition held at Ely College.

VEXEastCambs, an initiative setup by Witchford company The Innomech Group to ‘inspire and empower’ young students in the area of robotics engineering within local schools, held its first ‘Intra schools VEX robotics competition’.

Teams from Witchford Village College - Witchcraft, Soham Village College – Hydra, and teams SYNEX and COGS from Ely College, all competed at the half day event.

Competition winners ‘Witchcraft’ took home all four trophies, topping the table in all three events.

A spokesman said: “Teams pitted their skills during a series of events - Bad Neighbours (lifting), Complete Rubbish (sorting and placing) and Manhattan (cube stacking), with trophies for each event winner and an overall competition winner.

Tim Mead, managing director of Innomech part of The Innomech Group, said: “Our first competition has been amazing, students were really engaged with the challenges and troubleshooting the problems they faced.

“This shows the level of dedication students and staff have put in over the last few months to design, build, programme and test their robots in readiness for the competition.”

VEX, a globally organised competition with over 20,000 teams across 45 countries, helps students of all ages develop their design and engineering skills.

Next year the VEXEastCambs teams will participate in the VEX EDR and IQ 2017-18 regional competitions, with the possibility of progressing to national or even world level.

The Innomech Group, made up of Nexus Intelligent Engineering – an outsource product manufacturer and GB Innomech – a bespoke laboratory and industrial automation company, based in Witchford near Ely, has donated VEX robotics kits to the schools.

The teams are now seeking further sponsors to support additional equipment and travel to competitions, with all funds going to the schools’ robotics clubs. All sponsors will have their logos advertised at the competitions and promotion via social media, as well as opportunities to attend events.