Do the Robot: Competitions

Have you gotten your January/February 2012 issue of Jack and Jill yet? Blake interviewed three kids at The School of Columbia University in New York who are on the RoboTeam, an after-school competitive robotics club. Daniela, 10, Abraham, 12, and Oliver, 10, had so much to say about competitions and the really awesome robots that they created that we couldn’t fit it all into the magazine! Read on to get the web-exclusive scoop on RoboCupJunior competitions and some of the kids’ favorite robot designs. Learn more about RoboTeam by visiting their website.

Blake: What do you do at club meetings?

Abraham: At the beginning of the season we’re either coming up with an idea, building, or programming. Later in the year we make the costumes and pick the music, because they’re not as important to the competition.

Blake: What have been some of your robotic characters over the years?

Abraham: We made a Cyclops.

Daniela: My team last year had four robots: Fauna, Flora, Taxonia, and Factorian. Factorian was a building god, Fauna was the animal goddess, Flora was the plant goddess, and Taxonia was a taxi god. Fauna was a bird and we added feathers. She could flap her wings and move her head.

Abraham: One year we had cops and robbers. We also had a fantasy trace, and it had dragons and lions. That was when we had the Cyclops. Also we had an underwater trace three years ago and it had a Loch Ness monster and a submarine.

Blake: How many competitions do you go to?

Daniela: Usually we’ve done two—one in either New York or New Jersey, and then we go to Montreal because some kids from Montreal come to the competition here.

Abraham: Montreal is good practice, because the way you get into the internationals is by winning your regional competition, and our regional competition is one in New York, and then Montreal. If you’re the best in the country, then you get invited to the internationals. In 2010 it was in Singapore. I went to Singapore. The year before that it was in Austria, and I went to that too. Last year it was in Turkey, but we didn’t get in.

Daniela: This year internationals are in Mexico City, and we’re hoping we can go.

Abraham: At the internationals they also have older kids and adults who work on different things. It’s really amazing to see our little robots, and then to see these massive robots the adults make that are made of metal. So it’s really interesting to see how good it really gets as we get older. The high school that we go up to has a robotics team.

Daniela: Adults aren’t allowed to help you during the competition, and if someone catches an adult helping you, you’re disqualified.

Abraham: To make sure that adults didn’t help you at home, the judges interview you before you do your performance. They ask about your robot and sometimes you give a presentation where you have to explain it.

Daniela: If you can’t explain it that probably means you had help because an adult would do the work and you wouldn’t know how to explain it.

Oliver, Daniela, and teammates use black tape and white paper to test a dance program and light sensors at a club meeting.

Blake: Do you have any rival teams or big competition?

Daniela: There was one last year from Montreal and they were really good. We did get second place, but they got first. They probably started a bit earlier than us, because we all had to do all of the challenges. They can be really hard sometimes.

Blake: What are challenges?

Abraham: When you first join there are 14 programming challenges and 12 building challenges with a set thing that you have to do. And if you do all of them, then you can compete, but last year just to make sure that we knew everything, we had to redo all of the challenges. That took a while, so we didn’t have as much time to prepare for competitions.