Primary School Robots

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John Wheeldon Primary School
Design a Robot Competition

In October last year, I returned to my old primary school to do some research for my D&T project. I started with a plan to talk to a group of pupils, but I then ended up with a whole class, and then an entire year group! I showed them some RW footage and asked my questions. Then, the teacher, Mrs Bateman, came up with the idea of getting them to design their own robots. We would then judge them, and the prize would be a spare copy of The First World Championship video. Quite a long time later, the designs came to me, and the team sat down and judged them. We decided to split the robots into two groups, to maximise special awards, those that used legal weapons and those using illegal weapons (eg flame throwers). Then, we gave an award for the best technical design, and for the best robot design. Then there was the overall winner. To judge them, we split each group into 'The Good, The Bad, And the Very Ugly'. The best designs were Good, the OK Designs went into Bad, and the very very bad ones went into Ugly, and these were instantly (and rightly) out of the running for top prize (there were only two in this ‘blacklist’). So, here are the prize winning designs:

D2 was the best illegal robot. It is a good design and shape, and is colourful and well drawn.

It has three weapons. A lifting and flipping arm on the front, which also acts as a srimech, an axe on the tail, along with the flame thrower.

Phython is the winner of the best Design robot, not the best legal robot. Sorry, my mistake.

It impressed us as it is well drawn and colourful, as well as being a good design with good weapons.


	This is a joint award. You can see why Dinoaxe has won it. There is so much internal detail it amazed me. But it didn't win the main prize as it isn't quite as well drawn as some of the other designs. By the way, anyone who knows what a CDI unit is, please e-mail me!


	Techno Trasher has won this award because of all the extra technical details that were supplied with it. It's main weapons are a flipper and a saw.


	So, this is it. Who has won the overall prize. Well, this robot also won the best legal robot award and was chosen for the overall prize because there was three pages packed with colourful drawings and information. It was simply the best of the pack, and we are proud to show you the winner:




	There were some other designs we think you ought to see, and so here they are.


	All the designs (well, most of them) were excellent, and we hope some of them will be in RW in the future. By the way, to the pupils, if you can't see your design here, don't think it wasn't very good. I couldn't scan any on A3 paper, or on lined paper. I only have an A4 scanner, and the lines show up too much and I can't get rid of them.


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