A LANGHO teenager has emerged victorious at a national robotics competition for the fifth time in succession alongside his teammates from a Ribble Valley school.

William Donlon, 18, competed with two of his friends at the annual RoboCup in Rugby, which sees teams from across the country descend on the event to compete for the top prize.

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The competition, which sees robots designed, made and programmed by each team, play football against each other.

William, who is in Stonyhurt College’s team with George Ainscough, from Haslingden, and Anthony Chow from Hong Kong, has now won the annual meet foran amazing fifth time in a row.

The Sixth Form student, who has received an offer from Imperial College London to read physics and electronic engineering, is now bidding to raise enough money with his teammates to travel to China to represent the UK in the international competition.

Teammate Anthony hopes to go to Cambridge for engineering and George also has an offer from Imperial College London for physics and electronic engineering.

Physics teacher at Stonyhurst College James Bickerstaff, who runs the robotics club, said: “The team performed very well together, with each having a different role to play.

“William does the programming, George is in charge of the electronics and Anthony is good at the mechanics.

“They’ve used the same robot for the last five years and it’s got better and better.

“They have also been working on a super-robot, to be brought out for the international final, if they ever get there.”

Speaking on behalf of the team Anthony said: “We’ve always enjoyed robotics because it’s great to put your knowledge and skill to practical use and to do something fun in competition with others.

“It’s interesting that robotics is extremely popular in almost every other country except the UK.

“That’s a shame because it’s fun and involves several different things – engineering, maths, design and software design.

“Interestingly, the official goal of the competition is to produce a team of fully autonomous humanoid robot soccer players capable of winning a soccer game, complying with the official rules of FIFA, against the winner of the most recent World Cup.”

The winner of the last World Cup was Germany as the beat Argentina 1-0.