Local Focus: Five Rotorua students off to Aquabots World Championship

Five Rotorua Primary School students are off to the United States to compete in the Aquabots World Championships.

The underwater robotics competition combines engineering, robotics, mathematics and design.

Competitors must build a robot before driving it through obstacle courses.

The Year 7 and Year 8 students competed at the aquabots national competition in March, where they were awarded first equal in the intermediate division, earning them a trip to the competition in Maryland.

The team has less than eight weeks to prepare for their trip, where they will showcase their design and vie for a top title.

Student Laven Middlemiss said their robot came as a kit which they modified for a practical purpose.

"Our aquabot was actually built first to find hot spots, or warm spots in our local stream, Utuhina, which helped us find more pollution," Laven said.

Student Elodie Lines said operating an aquabot was difficult.

"It's technically like driving a remote-controlled car, except you can't go as fast and it's not as easy," she said.

Each student must raise $8,000 for the trip.

A Givealittle page has been one of the many tasks for Kaiako Layla Rask.

"At the moment it is the funds that are holding us back, so we've started a Give A Little page to hopefully reach our target, which is $60,000," Rask said.

"It's now going to cost $8000 each, so that's a lot of money.

"We're trying to raise as much as we can."

She said students were working extremely hard and were determined to make an impact on the world stage.

"You've got to have half of the competition done before we actually go.

"As part of the competition you have pool courses or events, so an obstacle course, a mission pool course, which includes four tasks, then a team video and a technical design report.

"The technical design report plus the team video needs to be in by April 25," she said.