Working within competition style constraints, students strengthened their abilities in design, coding, teamwork, communication, and iterative problem solving.
Peter Carnley Anglican Community School recently hosted a FIRST Tech Challenge (FTC) Robotics Workshop, bringing together students, teachers, and mentors from two Perth schools for a full day of collaboration, engineering and problem solving.
Students from Christ Church Grammar School joined six PCACS teams from Years 9 and 10 to prepare for the upcoming FTC robotics season. Throughout the workshop, teams presented their robots, explained their design ideas, and discussed challenges they had encountered during the build process.
A key focus of the day was improving robot mechanisms and structures, particularly systems designed to launch game elements accurately and reliably. Students spent time testing designs, refining mechanical components, troubleshooting issues, and sharing ideas with other teams in a highly collaborative environment.
The workshop atmosphere was energetic, friendly and productive, with students remaining engaged throughout the day as they worked through real engineering challenges. Teams openly shared advice and problem solving strategies, helping one another improve robot performance and reliability ahead of competition season.
Former PCACS student and visiting mentor Felix Abbott played an important role during the workshop, spending significant time discussing robot design with students and stepping in as Head Referee for robot activities and testing sessions at short notice.
The workshop highlighted the growing enthusiasm for STEM and robotics in Western Australia and reinforced the value of hands on learning through authentic engineering challenges. Students developed skills in design, coding, teamwork, communication and iterative problem solving while working under competition style constraints.
All teams are now looking forward to the launch of the new FTC season in August and the Perth FTC Competition, which will again be hosted at PCACS in mid Term 4.
Bev Wild
Senior School Teacher - Technologies