2013 All Ireland Mini Sumo Robot Champions

Tullamore College 2013 All Ireland Mini Sumo Robot Champions

On the 19^th of April the Transition year group participated in the first junior mini sumo robot competition hosted by Robotics Ireland at the Galway Education Centre. The students along with Mr. C. Meehan had worked extremely hard throughout the year in anticipation of this event.  Robot Sumo is a sport where two robots (sumobots) compete to push each other out of a circle or 'ring'. Tullamore College entered five autonomous robots; ‘Excalibur’,’ Finn’, ‘The Fighting Irish’,’ Raw’ and ‘Wall-E’.

The objective of this event was to introduce the emerging field of robotics, to secondary school students. The students were required to design, make, assemble and program their own robots in order to compete. After 5 hours of glorious battle against 84 students from 9 different schools ‘Excalibur’, (engineered by Francis Oandasan, Matthew Murphy, Pierce Cleary and Eileen Desousa) emerged victorious in the ring after a gruelling final against ‘Brownie’ by a team from St. Villiers in Limerick.

We would like to thank Mr. Meehan for his intensive work and assistance on this project, without whom this dream wouldn’t have been realised. We would also like to thank Ms. Quirke for her assistance and support never failing.

-Eileen Desousa & Mr. C. Meehan

Click above to watch a video explaining more about the sumo robot competion and  here to see more robotics photos of the winning team.