The Astromechs

The Peter Symonds college team for the Student Robotics competition 2014

Team from Peter Symonds College competing in this Student Robotics competition. Student robotics is an annual competition run by Southampton University.
Teams attend an event at the uni, called Kickstart, where they are told the challenge for that years competition and receive the specially developed electronics that make up the base of every robot.
Teams then have around 8 months to design, build and programme their robot to best complete the challenge. Along the way attending more events at the uni, called Tech Days, at which teams can get help from the Student Robotics people (dubbed blue shirts) and can see what other teams are doing.
The final competition is run over two days. It starts with a round robin league, which normally takes in the entire day one and the morning of day 2, in which four robots compete at once in each match and are awarded points according to the position in the match. Teams are ranked by the points received from the league matches, the top ranked teams then enter into a knockout tournament with the top two teams in each match moving forward each time. The remaining four teams compete in the final to determine the winner.

Peter Symonds College has been part of the Student Robotics competition since it first began and have built quite a reputation over the years, from winning several times, the recurring use of there (as yet un patented) cable tie flail system and more recently for some rather aesthetically brilliant robots, most notably Wall-e last year