Waiakea High Micro-Bots Place Well in Nagoya Again

It was another good showing last month for the Waiakea High School Robotics Team at the International Micro Robot Maze competition in Japan.

This was the school’s seventh trip to the event held at Nagoya University, which this year attracted a total of 131 entries from five nations with robots built by teams from 11 universities and several high schools.

The competition held on Nov. 10 included seven categories for the tiny robots, some consisting of cubes one centimeter in size, with others up to an inch.

Waiakea, which had micro-bots entered in five categories, took first place in the 1-centimeter Mountain Climbing Micro Robot Maze with “Stitch,” the entry from Team Chocoholics consisting of sophomore Erin Morikawa and senior Hannah Blue.

Erin Morikawa shows the certificate awarded for her team’s first-place showing in the Mountain Climbing Micro Robot Maze. Courtesy photo.

Waiakea took the top two spots in the 1-cubic inch Remote Control Micro Robot Maze, with seniors Reyn Mukai and Abe Sylvester on Team Crunchy Jello placing first, and Team 5 Star consisting of Sylvester and sophomores Calvin Uemura and Wataru Hayashi taking second.

Team Chocoholics also placed second in the Micro Robot Performance.

Waiakea High teams also took home several other awards.

All told, WHS had the second highest number of placings among the combined categories, with two first-place finishes, two seconds and a third. Its five top-three finishes trailed only King Mongkut’s Institute of Technology from Thailand, which had six.

Waiakea teams last year had two first-place finishes, two seconds and two thirds.

“All robots were designed, built and programed from the ground up by the students,” said Eric Hagiwara, advisor to the Waiakea teams. Chester Lowery served as the team’s “mentor.”

Usually the lone representative from the US, Waiakea was joined this year in the competition by teams from Honolulu Community College.