An 18-year-old Bermudian and his two teammates have won an international competition with a robot he designed and constructed.

Nicholas Chilvers, a former Saltus student who now attends Ridley College, in Canada, won the highest prize out of 2,600 teams in the Vex Robotic World Championships in Dallas, Texas, last month.

The Excellence award was given to Nicholas' team which showed the best in team play, programming skill, technical excellence and sportsmanship.

Yesterday Nicholas, who is still at Ridley, said he was not nervous for the qualification matches, but grew increasingly concerned as the competition increased.

He said: "For the qualification matches I wasn't that nervous, but in the elimination matches it started to get pretty intense because you know you could be one match away from being eliminated.

"The division finals and semi-finals were more intense. The robots we were up against were getting better and we were also in a huge auditorium with every team that hadn't made it that far in there watching.

"I wasn't driving the robot but advising the driver as what to do so you could say the weight wasn't really on my shoulders during the competition, but the slight fear of something mechanically breaking and causing us to lose was always on my mind."

His mother, Heather Chilvers, said the family was thrilled with her son's accomplishments in a field he had always been drawn towards.

Ms. Chilvers said: "We were thrilled obviously that he did so well. His father flew over to watch him. He supervised most of the making of the robots. He has always been technically minded. They were competing with teams from all over the world."

According to Nicholas' coach Rodney Reimer, it was the first year that Ridley College entered the competition, which started with 2,600 entrants from 20 countries that eventually were whittled down to 400 entrants who were invited to Dallas.

Each team received a kit to create a robot in May last year. These robots needed to be able to pick up balls and move them over a wall.

Many of the competing teams were supported by companies like Google, General Motors, Nasa or Innovation First.

Mr. Reimer said the Ridley Team had the support of Nicholas' grandmother and unlike the others only received their kits in November.

But the Ridley science teacher said it was Nicholas' mechanical ability that pulled them through as the overall winners.

He said: "I have taught for 20 years and I haven't seen a kid like him. He's got this ability to see how things work in the 3-D aspect. He knows before he builds it, that it will work where with everyone else it is trial and error.

"These robots were totally his design. He just intuitively knows how things will work. I just feed him parts. My guess is that over the Christmas break he thought about it for 100 hours.

"When they called out 1509 (the team number) it was almost like it wasn't real. I couldn't believe it. Nick was just so chuffed.

"When we told the president that our first kit had arrived on November 20 his comment was 'that's not possible'."

Mr. Reimer said he believed the robot probably took Nicholas only 100 hours to think of and 30 hours to put together, while other teams probably took between 200 and 300 hours. And while others experienced breakdowns, Nicholas' never did.

Nicholas, who says he gets his ideas from YouTube videos, said he is not done designing: and next stop: a beer-toting robot.

"Now this is all said and done I'm thinking of building something a little more practical, maybe a robot that grabs beers from a cooler opens them and then brings them to you."