Tangled wires, sudden death rounds, emergency repairs, shouting and panic abounded as robots took on one another in a battle to the title of AfroBot 2013 Champion.
Tangled wires, sudden death rounds, emergency repairs, shouting and panic abounded as robots took on one another in a battle to the title of AfroBot 2013 Champion.
Reigning champions brothers Joshua and Gideon Taljard making up team Floppy won the competition for the second year in a row.
Teams from around South Africa battled it out through the qualification rounds on Saturday to go head to head in a series of knockout rounds leading up to the top eight.
Teams negotiated a series of maths challenges involving placing dice on the relevant mathematical symbols to arrive at a number close to that chosen by the judges.
The semi-finals saw tensions rise: both matches ended in ties and had to go to sudden death.
In a Grahamstown derby, Team Lanro, which initially fought frantically to get its robot firing, went on to face off against Rovers and eventually forced its way to victory.
Team Floppy from Somerset East took on Johannesburg’s Spitting Cobras and solved their challenge comfortably, with 15 seconds left on the clock.
This is the second year that Floppy has taken the title of AfroBot champion with an almost flawless run for the day.
This year the two brothers built a crane on wheels that could grip and spin the die around before placing it on the relevant symbol.
The home-schooled Taljard brothers have worked feverishly on their robot since January and finished off by installing neon lights and floppy disks, encasing the robot in its namesake.
“We’ll be back next year,” Joshua said, hoisting the robot triumphantly in the air.
Official results:
1st Place – Team Floppy from Somerset East, Home school.
2nd Place – Team Lanro from, Grahamstown, Graeme College.
3rd Place – Team Rover from Grahamstown, Home school.
Also participated: Team Bugatti from Ntsika Secondary School, Grahamstown Nerd Attack from Kenilworth High School, Johannesburg Team Autobots from Johannesburg Muslim School, Team Spitting Cobras – Deutsche Internationale Schule (German School), Johannesburg. Team Fred – Deutsche Internationale Schule (German School), Johannesburg.
Afrobot sponsored teams from in and around the outlying areas of Grahamstown. Joyce Sewry ran the Khanye workshops for the sponsored teams – Team Robotic Einstein, Tech Wiz, Gold Diggers and Pillars.
