Land speed record inspires robot challenge at Banbury college

The Level Three IT students put their coding skills to the test for the event, run by the Bloodhound Super Sonic Car (SCC) education team.

During the course of a day, they worked in teams to programme a VEX robot around a course and use its grab hands to remove a rocket from the rear of a model car.

The exercise was designed to simulate a real-life scenario which the Bloodhound team will face during their world record attempt in the South African desert.

Student Jamie Nicol, aged 19, said: “We have done this sort of scratch coding before, but it is good to apply it to a practical project. It gives you a better understanding of how much programming goes into projects and the problem solving involved.

“Things don’t just work straight away, you have to keep going back and refining the code and testing the impact on what you want the robot to do.”

Bloodhound SSC is a high-technology UK project to design and build a car that will break the 1,000mph barrier. The team will attempt to reach a speed of 800mph in the South African desert in summer 2016.

Based on the success of this attempt, they will schedule a 1,000mph record attempt.  

Gerry Heather from the Bloodhound education team, said: “One of the key objectives of the Bloodhound project is to inspire the next generation about science, technology, engineering and maths. Projects such as this help students to understand the importance of coding and the role that robots can play in real life scenarios.

“Working with Level 3 college students is important, as these young people will soon be coming into the industry. Robotics, telemetry and programming is so important to the future of the IT and communications industry and we hope to show young people how these skills

are applicable to a range of roles.”

The Bloodhound education team has previously run roadshows for local schools from the Banbury and Bicester campuses of Banbury and Bicester College.

Find out more at http://www.bloodhoundssc.com/