RoboCup Junior Australia Competitions

RoboCup Junior has been developed with three levels of increasing complexity where primary and secondary students can choose to take up the challenge at their own skill and interest level. The three levels consist of RoboCup Junior Dance, Rescue and Soccer.

Welcome all RoboCuppers to 2008 and an awesome year ahead of us!

After the success of the new rescue challenge last year we have another great development in place for you to enjoy this year: It has never been a better time to be a part of RoboCup Junior in Australia. You will have noticed our Web page has not been updated for a little while: this is partly because of a number of changes we have been waiting to confirm for this year: please note the following:-

Chairman's greeting and update:

G'day to all RoboCuppers around Australia! We have another great year planned for you in 2008 and look forward to seeing you all at our events across the country. RoboCup Junior Australia is arguably leading the way in robotics for school-age students and with the introduction of our new challenges we know you'll be faced with some new situations and problems to work around! While more detail will appear during the year, here is some important news...

GEN II Robot Soccer is finally here!

We have fields being manufactured in Australia and soon to be available in China.

After months of discussion. the first set of GEN II rules have been finalised for Suzhou . Please not that rules will be slightly different for Australian tournaments, for example there will be 1.0kg and a 2.5kg weight divisions in Australia. RCJA rules will be published on this web site shortly.

GEN II will be the official RoboCup Junior Australia Soccer competition in 2008.
GEN II competitions will be running in China as a lead up to a demonstration league in Suzhou.

If you want to be a part of the GEN II Demonstration League in Suzhou, please inform your RoboCup Junior International Representative so that we can save a place for your entry.

Fields and Prefabricated walls and goals will soon be available from Modern Teaching Aids (http://www.teaching.com.au/lego_home.asp )

Information on the new GEN II soccer for RoboCupJunior Australia 2008 competitions can be found here.

New Rescue for 2007 Competitions

This year we are introducing a new rescue challenge. The rescue field is now based on a modular 594mm square tile which we can use to make an endless number of different coures for your robots to traverse and also provides us with the ability to add new tiles in the future. We are also introducing a 3rd dimension to the course with bridges, speed bumps and obstacles.

You can download the new rules and tiles designs from the rules section. If you have any questions or suggestions please email us here

New Rescue Field now available to purchase from MTA

Great News! The new rescue field is now available to purchase. We have combined all the tiles together into a single field to make it easy to get started. The tiles have been arranged so that you can practice both Rescue and Premier Rescue on it. If you start just after the Rescue chemical spill tile you have a Premier Rescue field ahead of you. If you start on the tile just to the right of the Rescue chemical spill tile and move towards the Rescue chemical spill tile you have a Rescue field (just do not put the obstacle on its spot).

The field also has markers on it so that you will be able to cut the field up into the different tiles and rearrange them to make different rescue fields as will be the case for competitions. The field is printed on a duarable plastic that can be rolled up and stored away if you choose not to cut it up into tiles.

Contact MTA on 1800 251 497 to place your order.

RoboCup Junior Dance

The RoboCup Junior Dance is a stunning integration of Science, Technology and the Arts. Participants program their robots to dance to music. Competitors are encouraged to decorate their entries and to motorise robot limb movements, to give their robots real personality.

RoboCup Junior Dance can be approached in a number of ways with creative new ideas appearing every year. Some previous ideas have been robots dancing together in tightly choreographed teams, students interacting with their robots while they were dancing, students creating their own music to dance to and students telling a story while the robots act it out to the music.

The Dance Challenge is a real team effort where students are can design their own t-shirts, prepare themselves for the team interview and create their costumes, on top of the programming and building.

RoboCup Junior Rescue

Artificial intelligence at its best! The Rescue competition mirrors the real life use of robots that rescue people from life-threatening situations.

In Junior rescue, Robots compete by following a winding line on a series of tiles to a designated rescue area. On the way the robot could encounter obstacles, bridges and short cut opportunities that will challenge the most intrepid programmer. After negotiating the randomly selected path, the robot arrives at a green coloured area which indicates a chemical spill. While the clock is still ticking the robot must find "the victim" before pushing them out of the quicksand to safety.

Premier rescue involves the same tiles as Junior Rescue, however, this time the robots can encounter some extra tiles including "speed bumps" and the challenging "gridlock". Once in the chemical spill, the Premier rescue robot is required to find and lift the victim out to the safety of a raised platform. A true test of a robot designers ability!

In 2007 we introduced a new rescue challenge. The rescue field is now based on a modular 594mm square tile which we can use to make an endless number of different coures for your robots to traverse and also provides us with the ability to add new tiles in the future. We are also introducing a 3rd dimension to the course with bridges, speed bumps and obstacles.

You can download the new rules and tiles designs from the rules section. If you have any questions or suggestions please email us here

RoboCup Junior Soccer

Students are required to design and program two robots to compete against an opposing pair of robots by kicking an infra-red transmitting ball into their designated goal. Teams have a choice of using two attacking robots or an attacker teamed with a goalie.

The field is the size of a table tennis table and is graded from black to white, to allow the robots to use downward facing light sensors to ascertain which way to kick. Due to its ease of introduction to the uninitiated, most students choose to use LEGO Mindstorms to build and program their robots. Although the LEGO Mindstorms set can continue to be very competitive while being modified to high degree of complexity, other students select alternative platforms and even build their own microprocessor robots from basic electronic components. A range of sensors can been attached to all of the robotic platforms. These include: electronic compasses, sonar, modified light sensors and motor rotation sensors.