Havelock North High School's robotics team (from left) Felicity Landon, Max Atkins, Francesca Vial, James Maxwell, Isla Atkins, Lily Beale, Alex Maxwell and Ryan Choy head to Canada to compete in June. Photo / Jack Riddell
11 March 2026 NZME photographed by Jack Riddell
Havelock North High School's robotics team (from left) Felicity Landon, Max Atkins, Francesca Vial, James Maxwell, Isla Atkins, Lily Beale, Alex Maxwell and Ryan Choy head to Canada to compete in June. Photo / Jack Riddell
11 March 2026 NZME photographed by Jack Riddell
As we stand on the precipice of a robot-reliant future, present-day Hawke’s Bay students are proving they’ll be the ones building them.
Two teams from Taradale and Havelock North schools have each earned honours in robotic national championships and are set to show off their talents on the world stage,competing as the Blackbots.
Taradale Intermediate’s First Lego League team became a champion finalist at the national championship in Auckland in December – booking their place at the Korea Open Invitational to be held in Jeonju-si, South Korea in July.
First Lego League is for students aged 9 to 16 where they choose and solve real-world problems using robots built from Lego.
As team member Ryan Fox describes it, teams build and program a robot to perform “certain missions” relating to four different areas – robot game, robot design, innovation and core values.
Taradale Intermediate's robotic team (from left) Kian Balhorn-Robertson, Fareed Rashid, Ryan Fox and Hunter Cameron head off to compete in South Korea in July. Photo / Jack Riddell
Each mission gets teams points and whoever has the most points at the end wins.
The team are currently building the robot they will take over to South Korea at their school.
The robot, named Kitsune after a trickster fox from Japanese folklore, features two movement motors, tyres from a toy tractor, two colour sensors and extra attachments for each mission.
Hunter Cameron said rather than delegating team members specific jobs, building Kitsune was a team effort to make sure “everyone can do everything” before the competition.
Meanwhile, Havelock North High School’s robotics team are off to Niagara for the Canada Cup of Robotics in June after finishing as champion finalists in the First Tech Challenge New Zealand Championship in Hastings in December with their robot Shaq O’Steel, named using a play on words of basketballer Shaquille O’Neal.
The First Tech Challenge involves high school-aged teams competing head-to-head by designing, building, and programming a robot to compete in an alliance format against other teams.
Team member James Maxwell said the competition involves a two-and-a-half-minute game where “there’s both controlling and autonomous parts”.
Fellow team member Max Atkin said the first 30 seconds of the game is the autonomous period “which is all hands off”, where the robot goes off its sensors and pre-programmed routes.
After that, two drivers operate the robot.
In Canada, the team and a new yet-to-be-named robot will compete against other teams in a game where the robot will have to shoot coloured balls into corresponding colour nets, earning points for the right colour order or delivering the ball into the net.
The team are currently training three times a week, but that will ramp up closer to June.
“We spend a lot of long nights trying to get it to work very close to the competition,” James said.
“So it’ll be a much higher level competition for us than what we’re used to at nationals.”
Despite the nerves which going up against world-class competition brings, the team said they were excited and were feeling quietly confident about their chances.
Brendon White, from Hawke’s Bay Robotics Trust, said robotics had been growing in the region and Hawke’s Bay could be proud as its young innovators prepared to take on the world, and “show them what Kiwis can do”.
Jack Riddell is a multimedia journalist with Hawke’s Bay Today and has worked in radio and media in the UK, Germany, and New Zealand.
