Northland students building Aquabots for underwater battles

Tangiteroria School students Sylvie Hermans and Chloe Harrison work on their Aquabot ahead of an underwater battle to find the best bot in Northland later this month.

In classrooms across Northland students are using their smarts to assemble underwater robots that will battle it out for the title of the best Aquabot in the region.

A second round of the New Zealand Aquabots competition is to be held at the Whangārei Aquatic Centre on September 27.

The anomaly of two competitions in one year arises from the Covid-19 lockdowns delaying the 2021 competition to April this year.

First, second and third of high school and intermediate/primary grades plus the next highest scoring team from round 2, along with the winners of the term one competition (Bay of Islands College, Ōpua School, and Matarau School) will be eligible to represent Northland at the New Zealand Nationals in Rotorua in December.

The winners of that competition will then represent New Zealand in the USA for the international finals in June 2023.

Dargaville High School, Tangiteroria school and Parua Bay Schools are joining the competition for the first time to compete for places in the National final and the chance to go to the USA.

Parua Bay School students Issy Nudds Alex Balcombe (soldering) and Max Stallworthy put together their underwater robot ahead of upcoming Aquabot battles.

Aquabot organiser Gareth Bodle said support from Rotary, Bunnings and Jaycar with donations means that students from smaller and isolated schools in Northland are able to compete with larger urban schools and leading schools in Auckland and through to the South Island equally and demonstrate student skills and innovation in Northland at the highest level of technology.

Bodle said the students have been working on their Aquabots and there would be plenty of competition between them at the Whangārei Aquatic Centre on September 27.

He said it was exciting seeing them bring their Aquabots to a real event to put their hard work into action and compete with others.

The work was fully testing the student's science, technology, engineering, and maths (STEM) skills.

Schools taking part are:High Schools - Bay of Islands College; Kamo High School and Dargaville High School.

Intermediate - Matarau; Arapohue; Ōpua School; Tangiteroria and Parua Bay.