The University of Sheffield Advanced Manu-facturing Research Centre (AMRC) has stepped in to help a group of children who have won a place in the finals of the World Educational Robot (WER) contest in Shanghai next month — making them the first to represent the UK in the world finals.

The children —Alex O’Carroll, Allen Yang, Sofia Armitage (all seven years old), plus Jacob Sibanda (12) and Kirin Harrington (11) — were given the good news during a visit to the AMRC’s flagship Factory 2050 facility, home to the Integrated Manufacturing Group.

Ben Morgan, head of IMG, told the children that the AMRC had been following their story closely and wanted to help them with their quest to reach Shanghai.

“You will be ambassadors in China for the Sheffield City Region, spreading the word that this is the place to come for engineering and industrial digital technology.

“We’re delighted to be able to sponsor such a talented team of young people from the region’s schools, and to show the world that engineering and our region has a very bright future if we work together.”

The children secured their places in Shanghai after scoring highly in a WER competition held at Sheffield University in July, where they competed against 50 UK children and 50 students on a visit from China to build a robot and programme it to complete certain tasks.

They will now compete against four- to 18-year-olds from 69 countries at the robot engineering and coding contest in Shanghai.

Additional financial support is still needed to help make the trip a success for the children and their families (www.justgiving.com)