Jinja SS wins 2017 regional Robotics tournament

Jinja SS defeated St Kalemba SS with 65.3% points against 55.3% in their regional Basketball Robotic tournament organized at Jinja Senior Secondary school on Christmas Eve.

The tournament that attracted only two teams J-Robotics Jinja SS and Fusbots team St. Kalemba SS was organized by the Just cause education outreach and sponsored by Vex Robots, IEE Canadian foundation, Hackers for charity organization and Team 4525Renaissance Robotics.

The participants also competed in robotics and automation technology competition. They were also required to program and wire a scorbot robot, wire up a programmable logic controller [PLC]and multitude of sensors and output devices.

Alex Nabongho, the tournament referee said the tournament was organized after a one-year training of the thirty-five participants that included eight female students.

 ''This is the first of its kind in Jinja but the second in Uganda after the international competition that was organized last year at Galaxy international school in Kampala where Uganda emerged the third among the twenty-six participating countries'', clarified Nabongho.

 
Canadian based head coach   Michelle Massaro said: ''The tournament was based on Science, Technology, Engineering and Math programme [STEM] and this enabled the students learn how to analyze and solve problems utilizing the engineering design process which help them develop technological literacy skills which are mostly thought after by a number of industries, ‘said Massaro.

She added that they are to use this tournament to select a team which will represent Uganda in the international robotics competition that will be organized in May 2018 in Nairobi-Kenya.

J-Robotic team leader Jinja SS Ronald Mpala, attributed their victory to the experience they have in assembling and using robotics in playing basketball.

He added "This is our second appearance in this tournament, we also participated in the international competition that was held in Kampala last year so this enabled us to win with a big margin.''