MAZE MASTERS COMPETITION AT NTRC TECH EXPO FEATURES ROBOTS BUILT BY DOMINICAN STUDENTS

On the 8th and 9th of May, 6 Secondary Schools competed to become the Master of the Maze in the NTRC’s 3rd annual Tech Expo student robotics competition. The schools competing were Castle Bruce Secondary School, Convent High School, Goodwill Secondary School, North Eastern Comprehensive School Orion Academy and St. Mary’s Academy. Students and their IT teachers received Arduino Microcro-controlers, other various components and parts, and support from the NTRC’s consulting facilitator Ms. Vashanti Raymond to build their robotics projects. The challenge: to build a robot that can navigate any maze it is placed in without

human intervention, including no remote controls.

The competition, held at the St. Alphonsus Parish Hall, was held in three rounds and spanned 2 days. Despite the challenges the students faced, Castle Bruce Secondary emerged victorious. Prize packages included cash for the students, the teacher and the school provided by NTRC, Purpose Partners, Republic Bank and the National Bank of Dominica, gift certificates from HHV Whitchurch and Multiverse Games (Open Solutions), phones, free service and branded tokens from Digicel, FLOW and the National Cooperative Credit Union.

This is the first such competition, a departure from past exhibitions of smart home, farm and city tech solutions. The secondary school IT teachers were pleased that the project-based learning approach helped them and their students develop new engineering and problem-solving skills.