Robots are the way of the future and four students are getting into the nuts and bolts of it all for the national Vex Robotics competition.

Around 12 weeks ago Tauranga Boys' College started up a robotics club for students to have fun and learn skills for jobs in the future.

'In the future a lot of people are going to lose their jobs to robots, there's a lot of information saying that, so basically future adults have to make those robots,” says teacher and club organiser Annmarie Lawler.

'We're teaching students skills for jobs that don't even exist yet.”

Currently there are four students in the club – Braden Smith, William Bruning, Joshua Badohah and Cesar Vargus-Tuerlings – but they hope to increase the numbers over time.

Through the club, the students have learned lots of mechanical skills involved in creating a robot, as well as the technical language. This is known as mecatronics, which is both mechanical and electronics.

'It's quite interesting to see these students talk because they all talk in technical speak that I don't even understand. They take it to the next level,” says Annmarie.

The four students were first to put their name down, but Annmarie says there are many other students waiting in line for a spot.

'It's easy once you've set the club up to have more teams, but you can only have four students per team.”

'For the Vex competition, we have simple tasks that are broken down, so this year we have to stack cones, pick up cones and drive them around,” says student Joshua Badshah.

'If our robot was done with this particular design, it still wouldn't be finished until the day of the nationals, as we would be like ‘this bolt isn't tight enough', so that's still physically changing the robot.”

As part of the competition the students are required to go to events called scrimmages, which they attend to observe what other teams are doing in the way of design.

'We were quite late in the year setting up, so when they recently went to one, they were able to take some of the others' ideas and work from there,” says parent helper Darren Bruning.

Each team is required to have a robot kit that costs $1500 that will give them the items they need to build their own unique bot.

Darren, who brought the idea of the bot club to the college, says the club relies on funding and more sponsorship is needed to buy another kit.

'At the moment we don't have enough money to buy another kit, but we are in the process of looking for sponsorship.”

The boys' team was recently placed third in a local Bay of Plenty scrimmage held at Otumoetai on Saturday September 2.

The Vex Robotics National competition will take place in February/March 2018. The winners of the national competition will then go on to compete with international students at the world Vex Robotics competition in the United States.