Fluffy Terminator Zanita Pratt helps her team guide their robot through a fierce competition against Pymble Ladies’ College. Photo: Zoe Cartwright.
Mechanical madness with a dash of glitter brightened Wollongong TAFE over the weekend.
In partnership with world champion robotics team Project Bucephalus, the TAFE Library hosted an international STEM robotics competition series for school students.
The FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) event is the only qualifying event in NSW held south of Sydney, and saw students as young as six compete with robots they built from scratch.
The winners go on to have a crack at the national championships.
On day one the room was buzzing with 14 teams that travelled from as far afield as Sydney and Moss Vale to take part.
Contestant Zanita Pratt, a Year 9 student from Cedars Christian College, is a student leader with Project Bucephalus’ international award-winning team.
She was competing with the Fluffy Terminators as their drive coach.
The team went hard on both style and substance. In addition to a team uniform of tutus and custom 3D-printed earrings, they’d also zhuzhed their robot with some sparkly purple panelling.
Zanita said they had built her from scratch, with some inspiration from other teams.
“She’s doing pretty well so far, better than she was last night,” Zanita said.
“We like to tweak what we already know; we figure it out as we go along.
“It’s a very collaborative game. The design of our intake on the front is actually based on another robot by an American team.”
This spirit of sharing and collaboration is key to the international competition.
The Fluffy Terminators give back to the community by mentoring two newer sides, the Mossy Lobotomisers from Moss Vale and the Warilla High School team.
It’s this sense of inclusion that attracted Zanita to robotics in the first place.
“In 2021, my older sister was struggling a lot, she was in a bad place with her mental health,” Zanita said.
“Then she did a robotics class and it was like a switch flipped.
“I wanted to see what could make such a big difference to my sister and four years later, here we are.”
Austin Mitchell was another member of Project Bucephalus at the event.
The 15-year-old, who is from a home-school background, is undertaking a Diploma in Engineering at TAFE in Wollongong.
He said TAFE gave him the opportunity to pursue his passions outside of the school environment.
“I started doing a Certificate IV in Engineering, but I moved to the diploma because it’s a faster pace,” he said.
“Going through TAFE is an alternative pathway for further education as well. It’s more focused learning, which I really like.
“I get to learn lots of cool maths and physics and a whole lot of industry stuff I’ll be able to use in future.”
