Two Dunedin intermediate school pupils are taking on the world with a robot they built from scratch.
Tahuna Normal Intermediate pupils Quentin Sime and Thomas Ketu-McKenzie, both 12, will head to the United States city of Boston next Tuesday.
They would be the only New Zealanders competing against 180 others from 35 countries in the First Lego League robotics competition.
Thomas said the two of them were travelling with their dads, and were "excited for the opportunity".
"It cost $12,000 and we were really grateful people have sponsored us to help fly us over," Thomas said.
First Lego League is part of a global education challenge that introduces science, technology, engineering and maths to children through hands-on learning.
The competition would run from June 15-June 19.
The pair have spent 2025 so far designing, building and programming a robot to navigate and complete a series of obstacles as part of the course they would run in Boston this month.
As part of the competition, the pair also created an "environment project," where they made a robot with a sampling arm that could test water quality at Tomahawk Lagoon by collecting and recording data.
The pair first were introduced to the world of robotics by their e-tech teacher, who showed them the ropes.
Last year, a high school student from the United States then came over and taught them more about robotics.
This year, they have been self sufficient, self-teaching and practising in the robotics room at their school.
Quentin said all they had to do was "code your robot to do these tasks on the computer and then download it on to the hub — simple as that".
Their robot would need to complete the obstacle course in under two minutes and 30 seconds.
He said the speed the course could be completed in "depends how good the robot is."
"We had to plan out what order we would do our missions in first before we created the different attachments and coding, because if one fails, it’s all screwed up.
"There was a bit of problem-solving involved here."
