This year, Team Tormead, led by Emily in Year 8, proudly represented the school in a highly competitive robotics league, competing against 21 other schools in a series of demanding arena challenges. Across multiple rounds, the team demonstrated resilience, engineering skill, and impressive problem-solving under pressure, ultimately securing a strong 6^th place league finish overall, having started joint 13^th after pre-competition challenges.

The competition began in excellent form. In the opening round, the robot successfully navigated the arena, located a target box using fiducial codes, and returned it to the home zone with precision. This strong start set a confident tone for the team and showcased the effectiveness of the robot’s vision and navigation systems.

The second round began in a similar way, but the team faced an unexpected setback when the box retrieval mechanism failed due to a broken servo motor. Despite this challenge, the team responded quickly and professionally, replacing the component in time for the following day of competition. This resilience highlighted not only technical skill but also effective teamwork and problem-solving under pressure.

Day 2 saw renewed determination from Team Tormead. Although the robot continued to be refined and debugged throughout the remaining matches, Emily worked tirelessly to optimise performance and maximise the number of successful box collections. Her persistence paid off, with the team achieving 2^nd place finishes in the final two matches of the league stage.

Overall, Team Tormead’s consistent improvement across both days secured a 6^th place position in the league standings, followed by a strong performance in the knockout stages. The experience proved to be both challenging and highly rewarding for all involved.

It was an outstanding competition and a fantastic opportunity for students to apply engineering, programming, and teamwork skills in a real-world context. The school extends a huge thank you to the Engineering and Robotics teams for their dedication in designing, building, and coding the robot.

We are now looking forward to next year’s competition and warmly invite new members, including enthusiastic Sixth Form students, to join the Robotics Team. Whether you are interested in coding, engineering, or problem-solving, there is a place for you in the team as we continue to build on this year’s success.

The result are available on the Student Robotics website here: https://studentrobotics.org/comp/league