RoboCup Junior WA 2013 Rescue Premier & Senior Dance State Champions

David Meego - Click for blog homepageAfter both my sons won the 2012 Western Australian State RoboCup Junior competition in their divisions and then went on to compete at the RoboCup Junior Australia 2012 National Championships, I decided that I wanted to get more involved in helping other students enjoy our family's love of robots.

I have always loved Lego and had kept all my Lego from my childhood for my children to play with. When I was in my teens the most advanced Lego available was Technical Lego (now called Lego Technic). Here are my kids building amazing robots with Lego Mindstorms, and I am thinking that I can combine my childhood love of Lego and especially machines built from Lego with my love of software development. So shortly after last year's National Championships I purchased a Mindstorms NXT 2.0 set for myself. Why should the kids have all the fun?

Anyhow, this year I have been volunteering my time on Friday afternoons to mentor for my sons' school's Robotics Club and using the knowledge I have gained from building my own robot and testing lots of different software and hardware designs.

This year All Saints College had 8 teams compete in the RoboCup Junior Australia competition (3 Rescue Premier, 2 Secondary Rescue, 2 Secondary Dance and 1 Primary Dance). After the first day of qualifying rounds we had 3 of the 4 remaining Rescue Premier teams and 1 of the 8 remaining Secondary Dance teams.

Aaron's robot "Jimmy" completed 4 qualifying rounds without making a single mistake to achieve maximum points with excellent times. This put him into first place for the knockout finals of Rescue Premier on the second day, with the other All Saints teams in positions 3 and 4. Rohan's team with their robot "Ted" advanced to the finals after a good performance of their routine called "The Pickle JAR and Teddy".

On the second day, Jimmy performed almost flawlessly, finishing the 2 rounds of semi finals and 2 rounds of finals with maximum points and great times, but one restart.  Rohan and his team had a fantastic performance in the finals. Word had got around about the amazing dancing Teddy and the spectator stands were full as almost all the competitors and spectators from all divisions came over to watch the performance.

The end result was that Aaron and Jimmy won the Rescue Premier division, and Nick and CJ from team Me, Him and It (also from All Saints) came 3rd. Julian, Asriel and Rohan (JAR) with Ted won the Secondary Dance division.

Below are some photos of the winning teams and their robots as well as some examples of the robots in action including the amazing dancing Ted:


Aaron, Nick, Christopher-Jack (CJ), Asriel, Rohan and Julian


Rohan with Ted and Aaron with Jimmy

RoboCup Junior WA 2013 Rescue Premier State Champions - Qualifying Rounds  

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dk30eekulCM

RoboCup Junior WA 2013 Rescue Premier State Champions - Semi Final

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y82MEdBcTU4

RoboCup Junior WA 2013 Rescue Premier State Champions - Final

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BMGQeMr-YeE

RoboCup Junior WA 2013 Senior Dance State Champions

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2hQS5xliUiY

For the previous posts on the RoboCup robotics competition see:

Well done boys. Now we are off to the Nationals in Brisbane, Queensland on 21st and 22nd of September 2013.

David