Feilding's Bridget Cobham and Kyron Zaloumis rank fifth in robotics world

Bridget Cobham and Kyron Zaloumis sit an impressive fifth in the world and in December won three awards at the NZ National VEX IQ robotics championship in Palmerston North.

The two Feilding students, known as the Space Dogs/Team 11273A, won the coveted Excellence award, the Teamwork Challenge award with House of Science from Tauranga, and the Robots Skills Championship which qualifies them to compete at the World Robotics Championships in Louisville Kentucky in April.

Bridget and Kyron in 2018/19 were in the Odderbots from Manchester St School in Feilding and attended the Worlds in 2019.

With Kyron moving on to Feilding Intermediate, the team disbanded, but now he and Bridget have teamed up as an independent robotics team.

Bridget, 10, and Kyron, 11, will both be at Feilding Intermediate this year.

To begin their quest to be the best, the Space Dogs compiled a design diary of the steps they took to build their winning robot.

Control and deliberate, and write, test, fix are the commands as they put their robot through the one-minute manoeuvre.

"We will be practicing three times a week for two hours," they said.

Kyron explained the coding blocks that all teams used to design their robots.

The teams are allowed a mentor and Bridget's dad Andrew Eades, a network engineer at Ōhakea, won the Mentor of the Year award.

And is it fun?

"Yes," they said.

It means they will be gearing up with their families for some serious fundraising to get to the Worlds where they will be showing their skills along with 1100 robotics teams.

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