RA Rodriguez sponsors winning school robotics team
As a company whose focus on robotics and automation has been rewarded by significant commercial success, RARUK Automation is keen to share its enthusiasm for the technology with the next generation. It recently demonstrated this commitment by sponsoring a local secondary school in the highly prestigious VEX Robotics Competition for Students and the team’s achievements certainly made everyone proud.
Stanborough School in Welwyn Garden City is now amongst the world’s elite. Having won the UK National VEX Championships earlier this year, the school’s Sharks Robotics team recently travelled to Kentucky to compete in the VEX World Championships. Selected over the course of the season from thousands of teams, Shark Robotics was ultimately pitted against the best of the best; the strongest 500 teams representing 40 nations.
This was the first time in its participation history that the Stanborough team had qualified for this high-status international event and as the winner of the National Championship, Shark Robotics lead the United Kingdom contingent into Kentucky’s Freedom Hall arena to do battle! Over the next three days the Sharks showed their quality, ultimately achieving a qualification ranking of fifth place in their division, the best result ever by a UK team at this level. And the record breaking continued.
The Sharks also became the first UK team to progress beyond the division quarter finals but although they fought valiantly in the semi-finals, the team was defeated, won over by the excellent attacking play of its opposition. Nevertheless, to progress so far in the competition was an outstanding achievement and one that remains unmatched by any other British team.
“The Sharks have proven themselves to be world-class – what a tremendous achievement,” commented Peter Williamson, MD of RARUK Automation. “Competitions such as VEX really fire the imagination of would-be engineers and it’s so important that those of us at the business end of robotics play our part in encouraging this talent.”
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