Read Lower Fifth pupil Hattie's write up of STEM Drones and Robotics Day on Friday 26 April...

Last Friday the first year computer science pupils took part in a programming challenge. We were going to write a programme to fly drones around a course, and programme lego cars to follow a map.

In the morning we flew drones around the MPH, learning how to programme them using Swift, on iPads, and flying them through hoops and following different heights.

In the afternoon we programmed lego cars. There were about 20 of us; we sat at tables of six, working in pairs. We had an iPad, some Legos, motors and the main battery. First, we were told to create a moving robot with two motors connecting to two wheels. It took a while for us to figure out how to get it to move, but then, eventually, we got it set up. 

The instructor taught us how to put together code in an app similar to Scratch on the iPads. We wrote instructions to get the robot to move forward a certain distance, and also how to make it turn on the spot to get it to move in another direction. He then set up mats for us to test our robots on; trying different pathways and routes to code. 

We then got given a new task; to rescue astronauts stuck in space. The robot had to have a moving arm to lift and hook the Lego astronauts off the bars. We programmed the robot to set the arm at a particular angle and then move to another position. All the teams had quite a different approach to this task. There was also the availability of using sensors to detect how far away the robot was from saving the astronauts. Vir and I created one arm with one piece of Lego. There were better designs than this, as we realised that other teams had designed the machine to have two arms and save both the astronauts simultaneously. But ours still worked out in the end (after many trials). 

It was a fun experience and we had a great time testing and programming all the different things the drones and robots could do.