Subject:
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Re: Lego robotics competition - last Sunday
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.loc.au
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Date:
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Mon, 27 Aug 2001 05:32:22 GMT
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Viewed:
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399 times
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> On Sunday, August 26 the School of Computer Science & Electrical
> Engineering
> is hosting the most exciting and challenging junior robotics • competition
> ever held in Queensland -
Dunno if anyone else went along. I went for about 30 minutes.
I'm afraid the event wasn't really focussed on entertaining or educating
spectators. It was really focussed on the competition and the
competitors, but seemed to be fairly well-run from that side of things.
While I was there, they were running heats or early rounds of two
competitions:
* robot soccer involving some elaborate looking ball (I assume it was
emitting some infrared signal that the robots could detect with their
light sensor)
* follow-a-line and knock-over-a-Yowie
The robot soccer was a bit dull. There seemed to be two robots on each
team, one to kick and one to be a goal-keeper. Most of the robots seemed
to be attacking the other robots, having mistaking them for the ball.
Perhaps they should have called it a rugby match!
The follow-the-line and knock-over-a-Yowie was more successful. However,
follow-the-line is pretty basic trick with an RCX and a light sensor, so
it doesn't take a lot of skill to achieve it. Some robots couldn't
follow the line but went round-and-round in circles; my suspicion is
that they had been calibrated for very different light levels (maybe
that was part of the challenge?). While most robots followed the line
OK, they didn't do so well at then moving toward the Yowie (to knock it
over). Most of them turned back and forwards in the general direction of
the Yowie but failed to detect it. Again, I suspect calibration of the
light sensors may have been the problem. Still, some were successful at
knocking down the Yowie.
Unless you had a team to barrack for, there wasn't much for a spectator
to do. The event wasn't really set up for the teams to display their
robots or programs to the spectators, which I probably would have found
more interesting than just watching them compete.
Many of the robots looked very similar (apart from the purely decorative
bits) suggesting that most of them were using the same basic
instructions. Looking around the tables where the schools were set up,
it looked like it was all Dacta Robolab kits. I don't know if the rules
permitted any additional kits to be employed, although I did see a
Robotics Discovery System on one desk. There were a lot of laptops lying
about. I don't know if these belonged to the kids, the schools, or
whether they were provided by the competition organisers.
I don't know if the kids were all using the Lego-provided graphical
programming interface or whether they were using other programming
environments (NotQuiteC, Java, etc). Or indeed, if this was permitted
under the rules.
I'd estimate there were about 20-25 schools participating. It was hard
to tell as most of the kids were wearing "Robocup" T-shirts, except for
a couple of schools that had clearly insisted on school uniforms. I
believe the winners go on to compete in some national competition.
Despite my reservations about the entertainment value for spectators,
all in all, I think Robocup looks like a good initiative. If you have
any connection with schools (student, teacher, or parent), you might
want to see if your school is involved or might be interested in doing
so. Certainly, getting schools to purchase some DACTA RoboLabs is
probably going to expose more kids to robotics than just those whose
parents know of it and can afford it (lets face it, Lego RCX isn't
cheap).
For more info, see: http://www.csee.uq.edu.au/~robocup/junior/
Kerry
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