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Dancing and Scoccer Playing Robots
On Friday December 2nd, Okanagan College hosted an event for students to showcase their talents in the filed of robotics. RoboCup Junior is an internationally accredited educational competition which includes teams of students ranging from Grade one to Grade 12 working together to develop solutions to one of three specific challenges (soccer, rescue and dance) using robots.
This year a variety of local schools have entered competitors from throughout the district. In the soccer challenge, two autonomous mobile Robots track a special light-emitting ball in an enclosed field and attempt to score goals.
Check out the soccer bots in action here:
In rescue, robots follow a course, negotiate uneven terrain and identify victims within re-created disaster scenarios.
The dance competition had teams competing on a theatre stage, performing with their robots in choreographed routines set to music, Teams were judged in a range of areas including Robot Programming design, costume, use of stage and entertainment value.
Nelson Shire, 12, took home an award for his soccer bot and was excited to get back to work on another robot. "It took a couple of weeks to build. I would stay up a lot of nights until 12 o'clock building it. I'm in Grade 7 now, and I'm not sure if I'll be doing this for university. Right now I’m going to just go on to building another robot," Nelson says.
Vern Shire, father, is also proud of older son Hudson, who is looking to take up robotics for university. "He's looking into a field called Mechatronics and is hoping for a scholarship to MIT."
Bruce Stevens, regional manager for the Applied Science Technologists and Technicians of British Columbia (ASTT), is one of the main sponsors for the RoboCup Challenge. "We fully support what the college is doing here," Stevens says. "What I find really fun about this is the focus and the intensity that the kids put into it. they put a lot of work into it and its a great opportunity for them to actually build something functional from design to function."
The top three winners in each of the three categories are qualified to compete in the World RoboCup held in Mexico City in June 2012
