We hosted the RoboCon 2023 launch, giving over 30 students details on the competition as well as experience with the kit which they’ll be using to make their robots over the next 5-and-a-half months.

The day started out with a talk from our mentor, Will, who introduced the competition (“Do androids dream of electric sheepdogs?”): a sheepdog trials simulation based in the year 2085. “The year is 2085 and the humans are dead. The androids left behind seek purpose. Recreating human activities has now become the driving philosophical endeavour for the android race. The national sheepdog trials held annually in Cambridge have become a major focus for the newly formed android civilisation. Shepherdesses come together to compete against each other to demonstrate the best in artificial intelligence.”. Afterwards, Will gave some information on the parts inside the kits as well as a few words on safety. We then took a break for lunch.

After lunch, we gave the GCSE teams their kits and set them off completing some challenges to get them used to using the kit. Our teams did very well, with some of them even getting to the bottom of the sheet!

If you missed it, you can find the docs at https://docs.robocon.uk/ and the rules here. For any more help, contact us.