STUDENTS dug deep into their robot building skills in the Jet First Lego League Challenge tournament at Hotpoint in Yate.

The team at Hotpoint’s Tumble Dryer factory in Yate welcomed over 50 primary school children for this year’s Iet First® Lego® League Challenge Bristol tournament.

Hotpoint, the UK-based kitchen appliance producer, once again proudly sponsored six local school teams to participate in this year’s international Lego robotics competition.

The exciting day saw six teams from across Yate and Bristol go head-to-head in the robotics competition, which sees pupils programme their Lego robot to complete a set of ‘missions’ in nail biting matches of two and a half minutes.

Frenchay Primary School beat tough competition to emerge as regional champions and will progress to the National Finals later this year. Teams from North Road Primary School and Abbotswood Primary School also picked up awards for Robot Design and Core Values, with other teams coming from Elm Park Primary School, St Paul’s Catholic Primary School and Stanbridge Primary School.

The First® Lego® League Challenge is an international STEM competition held in over 100 countries worldwide and challenges teams of 9 – 16-year-olds to design, construct and program an autonomous Lego robot, conduct research on a themed topic, and prepare a presentation of their findings.

The theme for this year’s tournament was Masterpiece, with organisers encouraging teams to present exciting and innovative ideas around how to communicate art across the world.

Teams spend the day competing against each other hoping to win the top spot, with areas such as design, core values, research, and robot game being just some of the categories teams can score points in.

Ian Moverley, Director, UK Communications & Government Relations at Hotpoint, commented: “We’ve been supporting the Iet First® Lego® League Challenge for six years now.

"In our industry, we’re very aware of the need to encourage young people into STEM careers and see firsthand the importance of helping to bridge the skills gap between school leavers and the workforce.

“Enabling local schools to take part is a great opportunity for our team to get involved with our community, but also gives young people the chance to learn and develop skills that can be more difficult to foster in a normal school setting.”