Year 5 code their way through the CrumbleBot Challenge Day

On Tuesday 4 March, we were delighted to hold our annual ‘Year 5 CrumbleBot Challenge Day’. The girls worked in collaborative teams in a scaled-down in-school version of the ‘RoboCupJunior UK National Primary Robotics Championships', but using an even greater variety of coding skills to program their CrumbleBot robots.

RoboCupJunior is an international organisation that runs national and international coding and robotics competitions in a variety of age categories and leagues and St Mary's girls have been past finalists and champions of the RoboCupJunior Primary Rescue Simulation at both national and international levels.

The ‘Year 5 CrumbleBot Challenge Day’ was led by Mr. Severy, our Computer Science Coordinator, with the girls participating in a series of challenges against the clock, using monochrome, ultrasonic and light sensors to enable their CrumbleBots to navigate autonomously around a variety of different environments. They had a strict time limit of 15 minutes for each challenge, but were allowed as many practice runs as they needed during that time, to allow them to adjust their code and get the fastest time possible.  However, there was a 5-second penalty every time their robot left the course or crashed into an obstacle, so the girls quickly discovered that accuracy could be more important than overall speed, as the penalties soon added up!  The times (and penalties) for their fastest runs on each challenge were added together and the team with the quickest overall time were declared the champions.

Certificates were awarded to the Class and Overall Year 5 Champions, as well as for the ‘Fastest Individual Challenge Time’ for each challenge, the ‘Best Technical Ability’, and the ‘Best Teamwork’.  Special congratulations to team ‘Capybara Rodrigos’ (Heidi S-H. and Melina S.), who were crowned 'St. Mary's Junior School Year 5 CrumbleBot Challenge Champions 2025'.

We would like to congratulate all of our girls for their determination, perseverance, sporting attitude and enthusiasm throughout a very intense, but enjoyable and highly productive day.  We would also like to extend our thanks to ex-Junior School pupils, Sadie P. and Tess O’C. now in our St. Mary’s Sixth Form, for giving up their day to assist so ably in the running of this competition.