Curro Durbanville Learners Second in Provincial Robot Olympiad

10 August 2023

Curro Durbanville hosted the provincial try-outs of this year's World Robot Olympiad South Africa on Saturday, 5 August, and two of our learners place second in the junior category. The Premier of the Western Cape, Alan Winde, even attended the competition and addressed the audience before the events started. Curro Aurora and Curro Salt Rock also hosted the Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal provincial try-outs, respectively, while Curro Somerset West also had teams participate at this event.

Aiden Ernstzen and Blane Ernstzen competed as Team RoboMasters against more than 180 teams from across the province, according to school spokesperson Nosipho Mlotsana.

“Participants are evaluated based on their performances, and the top teams from around the country will be invited to compete in the South African national competition in September in Gauteng [hosted at Curro Aurora]. This national competition will determine the best teams to represent South Africa in the international finals in Panama later this year,” she said.

“However, we prepared by putting in tireless hours, weekends and breaks to achieve the results we wanted. We faced some challenges with programs as well as the accuracy of the robot, but we managed to overcome our challenges as well as redesigning the robot multiple times until we found a suitable solution.”

Aiden said he was passionate about robotics because he enjoyed solving problems and robotics gave you a chance to do that with robots. “Seeing what can be done with merely a robot and coding is mind-blowing,” he said, adding that he and Blane hoped to win more competitions and explore the possibilities offered by robotics.

Now, we are just waiting on the WRO organisation to announce the teams that will advance to the nationals! 

 

Watch Premiere Alan Winde open the event