Tahuna Normal Intermediate School pupils recently took part in the South Island regional FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) Lego League Challenge.
The competition is about building and coding a robot to complete timed "missions" on a large game board.
Members of the school team, Tahuna Hydrobotics, travelled to Christchurch to compete.
Team member Harrison Tinger said the aim was to create a robot to complete tasks, such as pushing, lifting or dropping an item, within two and a-half minutes.
There were 15 different missions and the team were challenged to find ways to complete each mission by creating attachments that could be changed swiftly.
Examples of attachments could be an arm that could push something down, or a scoop that could collect items.
Harrison said he enjoyed the robotic challenge.
There were instructions on how to build a robot and it was also possible to make changes to refine the design and computer code.
Once the team were ready to take part in the competition, it was "really, really nice" to see the robot work, he said.
At the regional competition, the team gained second place with a score of 195 points, enabling them to take part in the national competition.
They were also given the task of devising a robot for environmental experiments.
Tahuna Normal Intermediate School is one of several schools that take part in the Tomahawk Lagoon Citizen Science project.
Robotics team member Holly Frood said they worked on a prototype robot that could house a small machine to test the pH and salinity of water.
Team members Harrison Tinger, Thomas Ketu-McKenzie and Quintin Sime will travel to Auckland this weekend to take part in the FIRST Lego League National Championship.
