A Swift Current team finished among the top ten at the 10th annual Robot Rumble at the Saskatchewan Polytechnic Saskatoon Campus last week.

The Robot Rumble featured 120 teams from all corners of the province competing in the annual android altercation that sees students bring their SUMObots and have them face off.

The event featured two teams from the Swift Current. The team of Grade 11 students Krishin Hockridge and Drake Dumont with their robot Hawkins and Grade 9 student Zac Lee and Grade 8 student Chase Empey with their robot Steven.

The team of Empey and Lee walked away with a bronze medal on the consultation side, which meant that they finished in the top six out of 120 teams.

Cindy Lowe, Business Education, Skills & Apprenticeship Teacher at the Swift Current Comprehensive High School she said the sixth place finish was the best a team from Swift Current has ever done.

"We are pretty proud," she said. "Two of the students that were on the team it was their first time competing, so they're pretty pleased with their performance, and I was super proud."

Lowe said that they acquired the SUMObots through kits, except for the robot Steven which they bought.

She explained how the SUMObots work.

"They are programmed to detect black floor and sense obstacles in their way, once they sense the obstacle, they are designed to put it out of the ring."

Lowe said that the key to their winning robots success was due to him being a smaller robot.

"He kind of went under the radar, there are sensors that kind of look for it, and he was lower and couldn't found it and had a faster motor, so he beat out the other ones."

Lowe and her robotics club started attending the Robot Rumble three years ago after she created the robotics club at the Comprehensive High School.

Lowe said that she created the club originally just to see if anybody was interested. 

"Since then we've seen a real increase in demand around the world in terms of coding skills and computer science skills in our students," she says. "Providing an extra opportunity for these kids to play around with robots is just getting that interest going and then hoping in the future we can offer these robotics classes to our students and get them those digital skills they are going to need, and the coding skills especially for their future."

Lowe added that getting the kids the digital and coding skills is important because jobs are becoming automated and run by robots, and we wanted the students to be the brains behind the robots.

She noted that she would like to see the kids get more involved with the coding of the robot.

(Zac Lee and Chase Empey`s robot Steven)