Team NIDES 7842 from Navigate in Courtenay is headed to the Robotics World Championships in Louisville, Kentucky in April.
For the second time in four years a team of high school students from the Comox Valley is headed to the World Championships of robotics.
“I’m really excited about going to the worlds, I really hope to do as well as possible” said robotics student Sam Crouch.
The students are on team NIDES 7842, one of the winners recently at the Provincials in Delta.
The goal of the competition is to get all of their jacks and cubes on to the other team’s side of a net before the other team can do the same to them.
“It feels good, it was super exciting to qualify for worlds” student August McClellan told CHEK News.
“There will be 540 teams from about 25 countries so it truly is a world class competition” said teacher can team coach Stew Savard.
Robotics teams in the Comox Valley have been successful for a number of years and attract students with a range of interests.
“We have students who want to go on to be heavy duty mechanics, auto mechanics, we also have students who want to do civil engineering, computer engineering, programming, game design” added Savard.
“I think I’ve learned a lot from putting everything together and the programming of the robot as well” added Crouch.
“When it works good it feels pretty good. Sometimes it doesn’t work but that’s just the way it goes” said team member Jacob Thornton.
The trip to Kentucky will be expensive and the team spent part of Saturday raising money at a bottle drive in Comox.
“In all it will cost us about $7500 to send the team, the chaperones and to pay registration for this so it’s not inexpensive” said Savard.
If you’d like more information on the team or to enquire about helping them out you can find them here.
Dean Stoltz
