 The magazine of the Melbourne PC User Group Robots Rule? Dickon Oxenburgh |
Well not quite, but welcome to RoboCup Junior the next exciting step towards
embracing the new age of Technology Education.
RoboCup Junior, an initiative developed in Melbourne is a robotics competition for primary and secondary
students that combines Information Technology skills with hands-on engineering challenges.
A distinctly Australian creation RoboCup Junior's rise has been meteoric. In just eighteen months the game
has become a world-wide phenomenon with many teams from around the world participating at the RoboCup Junior,
Seattle and Robofesta 20021 Japan.
China and other Asian countries have adopted RoboCup Junior as an endorsed robotic educational game. In China
alone, 500 teams will compete in its first year!
RoboCup Junior's growth can be attributed to its ease of introduction into a schools curriculum. The skills
learnt in the classroom can be extended to regional, state and then international competitions. These skills
also lead to employment opportunities in an exciting growth industry.
RoboCup Junior's National Finals (as part of the Interact 2001 Multi-Media Festival) last year attracted over
200 teams from around Australia, who battled their way through regional and state competitions to competed at
the RoboCup Junior Australia National Finals in Melbourne.
For two days, two levels of the Dallas Brooks Conference Centre were taken over by hundreds of students,
robots and their computers. The air of cooperation and spirited enthusiasm was noted by all who attended. The
finals of each event were held in a cauldron like auditorium. Students created a dance floor at front of
stage and danced along with the competing robots. Students, parents and VIP guests all joined in the
excitement of the soccer final, cheering the robots on by name, applauding skilled passages of play and
contributing to the Mexican Wave.
In 2002 this event promises to more than double in size with at least five other countries wishing to
compete.
Internationally Australian teams are planning their assault on the next RoboCup World Championships, in
Fukuoka, Japan in June 2002. The competition will be held in the Fukuoka Dome, that recently hosted the World
Swimming Championships. The Fukuoka competition will coincide with the World Cup of Soccer. The attention of
the world press is guaranteed.
RoboCup Junior's growth world wide will go a long way to ensuring that it will become the world's largest
international educational competition. Then it will certainly live up to the tag of "The Game of the New
Millennium".
For the uninitiated here is a brief rundown on the three games played in the RoboCup Junior:
1. Dance Parade
Split into age groups, the dance parade features teams from primary school students up to 12 years old and secondary students to 18 years old. Participants program their robots to dance or march to music. Competitors are encouraged to decorate their entries and to motorise robot limb movements, to give their robots real personality.
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2. RoboCup Junior Rescue Competition
Artificial intelligence at its best. The rescue competition mirrors the use of robots to rescue people from life-threatening situations, such as terrorist bombings, skyscraper fires and war zones.
Two robots compete, side by side to follow a line to a designated rescue area. The area is coloured yellow to indicate quicksand. Each robot will rescue their designated object from the quicksand and take it to safety. The robot will be given points for completing various stages of the "rescue" and for completing the "rescue" in the shortest time.
3. RoboCup Junior Soccer Competition
For students up to 18 years old this is the most difficult of the challenges and has the greatest spectator appeal, where robot is pitted against robot in a tightly contested competition.
Students are required to design and program two robots to compete against an opposing pair of robots by kicking an infrared emitting ball into their designated goal.
The files is the size of a table tennis table and is graded from black to white to allow the robots to use their light sensors to ascertain which way to kick.
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Reprinted from the May 2002 issue of PC Update, the magazine of Melbourne PC User Group, Australia
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