On Saturday, Anna Butler (10G), Johanna Conomos (10W), Sandra Jiang (10W), Zoe Pearson (10O) and Abigail Woodcock (10W) competed at the Queensland FIRST Tech Challenge Regional Robotics competition. More than 30 teams competed on the day. Brisbane Girls Grammar School placed ninth overall after five high-stakes and exceptionally competitive qualification rounds. The team also won the Bechtel Engineering Motivate Award to secure a place in the National Robotics finals in December.
The team worked tirelessly all year to design, program and fabricate their robot in readiness for the State finals and their achievement to compete at a National level is outstanding. The mechanical and electronic complexities for this year’s competition required competitors to have a robot that could be pre-programed to carry out autonomous tasks as well as wireless Bluetooth-controlled programming to pick up multiple payloads, and to also fire items through various goals.
Brisbane Grammar School also secured a place in the National finals and we thank, in particular, Mr Simon Canfield, for his fine leadership, support and guidance over the past two years of competition. A special thank you must also go to BGGS father and engineer, Mr Darren Pearson, who was instrumental in coaching our team, as well as hosting holiday and weekend build sessions. His support of our team’s coding, mechanics and overall strategy was pivotal in advancing our School Robotics Program.
BGGS was the only all-female team to represent Queensland at the competition, and therefore the only all-female State team to advance to Nationals. This is a very special achievement for our students and our School.
Mr Brendon Thomas
Director of Technologies Faculty
Anna Butler (10G), Johanna Conomos (10W), Abigail Woodcock (10W), Sandra Jiang (10W), and Zoe Pearson (10O), with Director of Technologies, Mr Brendon Thomas
