Scotch College

Junior School team is RoboCup Champion

Guy Mason

A team of 10 Junior School boys has won the 2004 Australian RoboCup Championship, held in Brisbane on the weekend of 4 and 5 September. The boys’ success has earned them the right to represent Australia at the world championships to be held in Japan in 2005.

The RoboCup Championships are all about robotics, involving a variety of skills that enable students to build and program robots. The ability to work in a close-knit team was one of the key elements of the selection process, and these boys excelled in this area.

The boys were entered in the Primary Dance section, focusing on creating a two-minute presentation that involved the robots performing to a piece of music. Our boys went one step further, composing their own digital music using an Apple computer program called GarageBand.

Called ‘Lord of the Rappers’, the team developed an entire rap dance show using a variety of robots. They pushed themselves to a high level of programming by controlling the entry and exit of their dancing robots, using light sensors and torches.

A robotic disc jockey with a highly geared-up arm spinning the disc lit up and kept in perfect time with the music. Three robots also added to the performance by doing a Mexican wave throughout the show. Creating the moves in time with the music involved detailed mathematical processes to ensure the action matched the music’s beat.

Preparing for the competition in Brisbane, the team worked virtually around the clock for three weeks, including lunchtimes, many hours after school and also a lot of class time. Specific tasks were allocated to team members based on their individual skills. Five boys were more suited to the building side of the robots and the other five to programming.

During the competition the team was completely self-sufficient, as teachers were not permitted into the team preparation area. There were more than 40 teams in the competition, and part of the excitement for the boys was gaining new ideas from watching other performances.

The first part of the competition was an interview, in which the team answered questions relating to the design, building techniques and programming of their robots. This ensured that the performance was the students’ own work and that they had fully understood the processes. Following the interview, the robots performed, and the response from the audience was amazing. Ten teams (including our own) were then selected for the finals later in the day, and the whole process was repeated with a different judging panel.

The second performance by our team received thunderous applause, and then the boys themselves virtually brought the roof down when the final announcement was made – ‘Scotch College Junior School, Australian RoboCup Champions for 2004’. This included an invitation to represent Australia at the world championships to be held in Japan in 2005!

Congratulations to the boys and especially to Ms Jocelyn Pride for her enthusiastic support and commitment to the robotics program.

GUY B MASON
Head of Junior School