Gearing up for the EPro8 Senior Challenge
22 Aug 2022
Four College boys have combined their knowledge of Mathematics, Physics, and Computer Science to develop outstanding robotic devices at the EPro8 Senior Engineering Challenge.
Yusef Elnahas, Kevin Thiele, Michael Taylor, and Elliott Grey will now compete in the Canterbury Grand Final this month following their recent regional heats success.
“We were excited, as this was the first senior EPro8 event held in Canterbury. It has previously been exclusively for juniors,” Yusef explains. “There was a lot of nostalgia as we saw the building kits being set up.
“There are four different challenges and each challenge has a list of tasks that you must complete in order. You then get points for each task.”
During the heats, the boys had to delegate and complete tasks with aspects of Mechanical and Electrical Engineering, along with Computer Science and Mathematics. One task focused on building a vehicle that could be used to draw road markings.
“The vehicle had to be of certain dimensions and had to include two mechanisms – one that allows it to be remotely controlled and another that allows it to move a marker in different directions.,” Yusef says. “It was definitely one of the coolest things we have built, especially during my time in the EPro8 competitions.”
In preparation for the final, the team aims to build familiarity.
“We are going to come up with ideas and find different ways to use the components. Although they have their basic functions, we can think outside the box to create an innovative and advanced solution.”
The boys urge everyone to take on the EPro8 competition, and try robotics as a whole.
“As the competition is engineering based, we believe that anyone can participate. Anyone can help out with the maths, motoring, or electrics. We would like to introduce robotics to the rest of the school and it would be cool to get more boys involved.”
– Christian Higgins