All Ireland robotics glory for Tubber NS students

Tubber NS will represent Ireland at the Vex IQ Robotics World Championship Finals in Dallas later this year.

A team from the school won two national awards at the All-Ireland primary schools final of the Vex IQ Competition at Páirc Uí Chaoimh on February 22.

Tubber NS took home the Think Award and the Robot Skills Champion Award.

The Think Award is presented to a team that has developed and effectively used quality program as part of their strategy to solve the game challenge. Teams must participate in the Autonomous skills challenge to be eligible for the Think award.

The Robot Skills Champion Award is presented to the team with the highest combined Programming Skills Challenge and Driving Skills Challenge score.

Tubber was among seven Offaly schools competing in the national finals, along with St Mary's National School Pullough; St. Brendan's Boys Primary School Birr; Cappagh National School; Scoil Eoin Phóil Tullamore; High Street National School and Scoil Shinchill - Killeigh National School

Tubber NS had reached the national final after taking part in the 2023 Offaly Vex IQ competition, which included over 50 schools in total, and in which they won three prizes, the Teamwork Champion Award, Robot Skills Champion Award and the Overall Excellence Award.

The schools were tasked with building a robot that could interact with a series of complex machines that dispense disks that could then be manoeuvred into a goal to score points.

To begin with, the children build the arena that the game is played on. The children then design, build and adapt their robot to score points in the game. Once the robot is built the children create code so that the robot will drive autonomously and they then practice driving the robot with a control. Finally, the children create an engineering notebook and posters documenting each aspect of their journey from start to finish.