The Barclay School

Barclay Robotics club took part in the Vex Robots World Championships in Los Angeles on 2/3 May. Although not a winner this year, Barclay finished up on the leaderboard and it's a big well-done to all the students that took part.

Taking place at the California State University in Northridge it was a mammoth operation, with the venue looking more like a pop concert than a robotics competition. There was a live webcast provided by NASA, with international competition coming from China, Taiwan, Singapore, Korea, Brazil, Canada, UK and the USA. It was a thrilling tournament, which was ultimately won by a strong alliance from China.

The competition was not without its moment of drama when Chinese teams declined to partner with a team from Canada that had come top of the round-robin phase of the competition. This caused consternation in the crowd and took some time to sort out!

The championships took place over two days of gruelling competition with 12 hour days! The Barclay boys came through with flying colours and were a credit to the school.

It wasn't all work though. After the competition there was a party for those taking part. This gave gave the Barclay teams a chance to mix on the international stage with students from around the world. Where else could you be talking to Americans one minute and playing football with the Brazilians the next!

The Barclay teams have taken away valuable lessons from the competition and hope to improve on their performance should another opportunity arise. This has been a fantastic opportunity for all concerned and our scincerest thanks must go to MBDA and our other sponsors that made this dream competition a reality.

A short video showing highlights of the competition can be seen here.