In 2003, when Andrew Wightwick was 8, he attended some "Family Robot Days" at Hills Road 6th Form College in Cambridge, run by physics teacher and robotics enthusiast David Massey. This was his first introduction to Lego robotics, and the glimpse he had of the FIRST Lego League competition made him very keen to enter. His mother, Catherine, said that when he was 10 they would look for a local team for him to join.

As there were no local teams, in 2005, Catherine found herself coaching a team of ten 10-year-olds from Bottisham Primary School, using the Lego RCX system. They were called the Bottisham Barnacles. They had meetings at school lunchtimes and at weekends at school and at Hills Road 6th Form College, where David Massey was running "drop-in" sessions on Saturdays to help local FLL teams. Bottisham Barnacles entered the Cambridge regional FLL heat that December, and put up an impressive showing for a rookie team. They didn't score highly enough to win any of the trophies at the competition, but the competition organisers subsequently awarded them a special trophy for trying so hard!

In 2006, Andrew, his younger brother Oliver, plus Eric (the son of one of David Massey's colleagues) and Luke (from another team that went to the drop-in sessions on Saturdays) formed a 4-man team called the TechnoBotts. Catherine continued as team coach. They entered the FLL regional heat in Essex (having heard on the grapevine that the standard was not so high as the Cambridge heat!) and won the Director's Award at that, qualifying for the UK National Final in Birmingham in January 2007. As the new Lego NXT robotics system had just come out, and the team was very keen to try it out, one of these was duly purchased and the robot was redesigned from the ground up, completely rebuilt and reprogrammed, in the few short weeks between December and January. This redesigned robot performed vastly better than the first one and to the team's utter delight, they won the robot performance award at the UK National final, came second overall, and were invited to the FIRST World Festival in the US as one of the two teams representing the UK.

The FIRST World Festival 2007 was an amazing experience – there were around 100 teams there. The TechnoBotts tried hard, and achieved 28th place in the world for robot performance, plus a certificate for Gracious Professionalism. We would like to thank the following people or organisations, who without which, we would never have made it to Atlanta that year:

  • The Institute of Physics
  • British Council
  • Microsoft
  • nCipher
  • ARM
  • Cambridge Cognition
  • Cambridgeshire County Council
  • Setpoint Essex
  • Bottisham Parish Council
  • Elizabeth March Foundation
  • Litcham Parish Council

In the 2007/2008 season, the team reformed as TechnoBotts2, minus Luke but plus Samuel, and entered for the Cambridge regional FLL heat. The team received a robot kit from Robert Sayles (now John Lewis), meaning that there was now a designated "team kit". They won the Technical Design award, but came second overall, so did not qualify for the UK final. Undaunted, Andrew, Oliver and Eric then entered for RoboCup Junior in both the Rescue and the Dance categories (normally teams only enter for one category) and did so well in the regional and national finals of that competition in both Rescue and Dance that they were invited to represent the UK in the international finals which were in China. Due to family commitments the team was sadly unable to go. You can find the 2007-8 website here.

In the 2008/8 season, the team reformed as TechnoBotts3, minus Samuel but plus Alex, and worked very hard to do better at the Cambridge regional heat. (Catherine had refused to let them take the easy way out and enter the Essex heat). Their strategy of lots of hard work paid off, and despite a disastrous last run on the robot table, their excellence in the other categories including Technical Design and their Research Project gained them a place at the UK and Ireland final at Loughborough in January 2009.

More hard work ensued before the UK final, chiefly concentrating on making the robot more reliable. As was the habit, a total redesign ensued. This worked well, and TechnoBotts3 became the first UK team ever to achieve a perfect score of 400 on the competition table. TechnoBotts3 took the Robot Performance trophy and the Director's Award trophy for the top UK team and were the sole UK invitees to the FIRST World Festival in April 2009.

After a lot more work on the robot (and much fundraising) the team was ready, and flew out to Atlanta, Georgia. The team's aim was to bring a trophy back to the UK. On the first day of the competition, the technical judging, research project and teamwork judging all went very well, but the two trial robot runs in the Georgia Dome were disappointingly low-scoring. This was because of the translucent roof on the Georgia Dome – when clouds passed in front of the sun the light levels changed and this made all the programs using light sensors (so the robot could tell where it was on the mat) very unreliable. After some speedy reprogramming the next morning, the robot scored 370 in its first run, a perfect score of 400 on its second run (one of only 4 perfect scores) and 365 in its third run. This put the team in 4th place in the world for Robot Performance – behind Brazil, China and Singapore – just out of the trophies which were given to the top three. However, the TechnoBotts3 team was absolutely delighted to be awarded 1st place in the Innovative Design award – it's the first time a UK team has won a first place trophy for anything at the FIRST World Festival.

So what does the future hold for the TechnoBotts? Reforming for the 2009/10 season as a 3-man team, TechnoBotts4, Andrew, Oliver and Eric will retire from the FIRST Lego League and instead concentrate their efforts on RoboCup Junior. They plan to enter for the Rescue and the Soccer categories, using the Lego NXT platform, and their aim is to represent the UK at the international RoboCup Junior final in Singapore in June 2010.