Robots Put Human Ingenuity to Test
West Australian (09/24/08) Maier, Alex

The National Robocup Junior competition in Perth, Australia, recently brought nearly 50 teams of primary and secondary students from Australia, China, and Singapore together to test their robots in soccer and dance competitions and in rescue operations. The event exposes younger students to a higher level of computer science, design, and technology, says Robocup Junior WA chairwoman Helen Deacon. For the soccer competition, the teams were charged with building fully autonomous humanoid robots that could defeat a team of human soccer players. Similarly, the teams had to use robotics and artificial intelligence to create sophisticated dance steps for robots, which also had to keep time with the music. The student teams also had their robots navigate various obstacles as they rescued a "person" from an oil spill. "Seeing the students using their own initiative to create something unique is fantastic and of course it's a lot of fun to bring robots to life in the real world," says event coordinator Craig Bloxsome.
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