Once again RAF Honington hosted school children from across the region today to take part in the annual Robotics Challenge competition.
The event is run by Engineering UK but Station STEM Ambassadors from Cyberspace Communications Flight host and assist with the event and finally judge the overall competition. The national event is attended by high school children in Y7-9 who are interested in engineering and looking to choose STEM subjects. This year saw 6 schools attend the regional final at RAF Honington from across the East of England.
All preparations for the event including the building and coding of the Lego robots is completed by the school teams at after school STEM clubs. Students then attend this annual event to put their robots into practice on a challenge mat where they have to be able to move their robots around in autonomous fashion and retrieve items. They also take part in teamwork challenges and present informative briefs on innovative solutions to environmental and energy efficiency problems.
This year the RAF Regiment Training Wing attended the event with the new VR Headsets currently being trialled for simulation weapons training and of course the high school STEM teams had great fun trying this out too.
The Royal Air Force sponsored event is a great initiative to harness the enthusiasm of the next generation in the hope that one day they will join the Royal Air Force as an engineer.
The Winners of the event; St Alban’s Secondary School and the City of Norwich International School will now go on to compete against the other regional winners at the Big Bang UK event held at the NEC on 22-24 Jun 22. We wish them the best of luck!