Opting for speed and manoeuvrability has paid off for a team of young Marlborough underwater robot builders who will soon be heading to the United States to pit their creation against the world’s best.

The Bumble Bots have been crowned 2023 primary school division champions, at the National AquaBots Competition in Rolleston on November 26. They came in sixth overall out of 39 teams, including high school sides.

Teams were initially all given the same kit and motors to build with, but it was up to them to figure out how to construct and modify their underwater Remotely Operated Vehicles (ROVs) for a range of challenges.

And their national win meant the Bumble Bots will now move on to compete against aquabot builders from around the globe at the 2024 International SeaPerch Challenge at the University of Maryland at the end of May.

“I’m really excited to, like, see other teams, different designs, and compare ourselves against the rest of the world. Represent New Zealand also,” squad member Sam Richardson, 11, said.

Their bot was designed for “speed and manoeuvrability,” just like the eponymous bumblebee, Sam said.

“We actually got the (team) name before we built the bot … and we thought we’d build quite a small one, ‘cause well, bees are small, right? And we thought ‘yeah, that’d work’,” he said.

“All the other bots, they had quite a big profile compared to this, because we’ve made ours a lot shorter and smaller,” he said.

Sam said he wasn’t expecting their team to win their division in the top of the south’s regional competition on September 17, let alone later be called national champions.

“There was definitely a moment of disbelief for me,” he said.

Teammate Claudia Stafford, 9, who was “extremely happy and excited” to be travelling to the US, reckoned they had a good chance of impressing on the world stage too.

“Because our bot is small and fast,” she said.

With a chance to redesign their bot before taking it overseas, the Bumble Bots also had a big decision to make: stick with their winning design, or make adjustments for the new tasks they would be faced with.

Devon Marshall, 11, thought they should “completely redesign”. But Sam said there were “disagreeances”.

NZ AquaBots was the first underwater robotics programme for school-aged children in New Zealand, giving them a chance to learn engineering concepts and hone skills that could be applied to industries in Aotearoa and beyond.

“Not only is it practical, they can see there’s a career path or a technology path that they can apply their knowledge to,” said Claudia’s father Heath Stafford.

Challenges at this year’s national event included using their bot to pick up magnetic “scallops” from the swimming pool floor and steering it through hoops on an underwater obstacle course, Stafford said.

And the Bumble Bots did “everything themselves” in the designing and constructing process, even building their own obstacle course to practice on.

“We were saying to them, for the technical stuff, you need to be neutrally buoyant … and they said ‘yeah, we’ve already done that’,” Stafford said.