BBC Techno Games

Several years ago Derek Foxwell who is a BBC special effects engineer, had an idea for a TV programme, he called it “Robot Wars”. The rest is history. When Derek came up with another unusual idea the BBC producers listened carefully. This other idea is “BBC Techno Games”. It was piloted in 2000 and was seen to be another success so the BBC is running a series in March 2001. It will almost certainly become a regular feature on our TV screens. Techno Games is robot olympics.

Barking Abbey at Techno Games 2001
Year 9 students were entered into the Techno Games. There are many events, which include, gymnastics, (Synchronised “Clusterbots”) cycling, shot put, long jump, high jump, rope climb, sprint and swimming. This of course is all very easy to talk about but a little more difficult to achieve. All we had to do was build a group of performing robots to enter these events.

Barking Abbey had entries into the 25 metres swimming (Erica the Eel, Swimbot and Walter Boatman) and 25 metres sprint (Hungarian Horntail Dragon, Geyser Bird and Erica`s Body Parts ). We were invited along to the Park Street Studios in St. Albans for filming.

Winning or losing didn`t matter we took part in Techno Games 2001, we were there. The Barking Abbey Design & Technology Department will be back again next year in the next series of Techno Games with a series of entries to hopefully most of the events. We will be entering machines from GCSE coursework projects in GCSE Mechanisms Design and GCSE Model Making Design. So if you want to be there, you know what you have to do......Design and Technology GCSE!

Barking Abbey at Techno Games 2001

Barking Abbey at Techno Games 2003