PRK team takes part in “Robotex 2024”
From 5 to 7 December 2024, the team of the Preiļi Robotics Club (PRK) of the Jānis Eglītis Preiļi State Gymnasium took part in the 24th international robotics competition “Robotex International 2024”, which was held at the Unibet Arena in Tallinn.
The school was represented at the competition by Markuss Prikuls (9.A), Jānis Bērzinieks (9.B) and the school’s graduate Andrejs Gžibovskis. Robotex competitions are held in various events and age groups, and our team members took part in several of them – Andrejs, together with Markuss, competed in Lego line following, Lego Sumo and Folkrace, while Jānis competed in Lego Sumo, Lego Sumo 3kg and Mini Sumo.
This year, 890 team robotics enthusiasts took part in 15 events from 35 countries around the world – from India, China, the Republic of Korea, Cyprus, Greece, Hungary, Egypt, Italy, Poland, Latvia, Lithuania, Sweden, the USA, Estonia and others. Considering the considerable competition, we managed to achieve relatively good results.
In the Lego line following event, Andrejs finished in 6th place – he missed only narrowly the chance to compete in the final on the big stage, which was contested by the top 5.
In the Folkrace event, Markuss and Andrejs won a place in the final, which was contested by the top 4 robots. Although the final run was very promising, this time we had to settle for 4th place.
Jānis’s Lego Sumo 3kg fights in the ring were worthy of a thriller: in the group fights Jānis defeated his opponents, which gave him the chance to compete in the next round, held on the double-elimination principle. In the elimination fights Jānis’s robot faced competitive opponents, yet Jānis managed to win a place among the top 4, which gave him the chance to take part in the remaining final fights in the centre of the hall on the big stage. In the deciding fight a little luck was missing, and he had to settle for 4th place, yielding to participants from Italy and Korea.
Jānis finished the group fights of the Mini Sumo event as one of the best and continued in the elimination round, where, against strong competition, he finished in shared 17th place.
Although this year we came home with two “wooden medals”, having taken two 4th places, we are pleased that the skills of our robot builders and programmers are competitive enough, and this year’s result gives us extra motivation to fight for places on the podium next year!
Thank you to the municipality and the gymnasium for their financial support.
Juris Erts, head of the robotics club