Cammeraygal High School will become the first public school to represent Australia at the FIRST Tech Challenge robotics premier event in Eindhoven, Netherlands this month.

Team coder Egor Datskii said the school’s ‘Crobotics’ team's first attempt to qualify three years ago resulted in complete equipment failure.

“The first year we entered the regionals, we came dead last. No points,” he said.

“And then the second year we made it to the national competition.”

Egor said it was third time lucky as the team progressed to the international challenge competition in The Netherlands, with a brand-new robot fully designed, coded and built by students juggling their HSC studies.

The FIRST Tech Challenge involves teams designing, building and coding robots to pick up blocks and place them in buckets to score points.

Obstacles and other teams on the field add further challenges, with one student driving the robot and another controlling the arms. A second round requires the robots to be coded to operate autonomously.

“You drive around the field, communicate with your teammates, and try to score more points than the other team at the same time,” Egor said.

“Sometimes you can play defensive and try to block the other team from scoring points as well. There’re all sorts of strategies that you use.”

Team captain and lead designer Nicolas Rognlien Ares said an important aspect of the competition was networking and communicating.

“Developing the skills and communicating with other teams and within your team is probably the biggest part,” he said.

“There are a couple of different awards and only two or three of them are actually about the robot and engineering. Everything else is innovative thinking and communication.”

The team has learned from the mistakes of the past and wants to make an impact on the world stage.

“We’re the only public school in Australia to have made it, which is exciting,” Egor said.

Along the way, the team has also found time to help other public schools join the FIRST Tech Challenge community.

Crobototics team members

• Leo Gregory - Portfolio Manager and Team Presentation officer
• Egor Datskii - Team coder
• Nicolas Rognlien Ares - Team Captain, Lead Designer/Engineer and Co-driver
• Sutter McQuillan - Lead Driver and Builder
• Robert Boica - Builder
• Toby Ley - Engineer / Builder
• Oskar Adamse - Engineer, Builder and Human Player
• Rafael Perez - 3D printing Engineer and Builder
• Max Richardson - 3D Printing Engineer and Portfolio Manager
• Neo Fendly - Designer / Artist

About FIRST robotics

FIRST robotics is an international organisation that looks to develop STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) in young people by providing yearly team-based robotics challenges across all years.

The FIRST Tech Challenge premier event invites teams that have just missed out on a spot at the world championships to compete in an equally competitive global event.