Tag: Robotics

At the recent Robocup Junior Western Australian State Championships competition, I took a few moments just before the awards ceremony to demonstrate a robot that could move in any direction.

While the actual robot was originally designed for the Rescue Maze challenge to allow it adjust its position in the maze by moving sideways, it ended up being much more capable in how it can move and could be the basis for a dancing robot for the Onstage Performance challenge. 😀

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Following on from the Robocup Junior Western Australian State Competition 2020 article I wanted to share with you some videos of the robots I have been working on.

As an adult I cannot compete in the Robocup Junior competition, but there is nothing stopping me enjoying working/playing with Lego Mindstorms robots and coding something that has a presence in the physical world.

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As you may know I am on the Western Australian Committee for Robocup Junior Australia. This year the WA State Competition, along with most of the other state competitions and the national competition, were cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

As Western Australia was in a good position with no community transmission, it was decided to hold a delayed WA State Competition in November instead of the usual August.

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Just when I thought I had finished the series of articles explaining the techniques need to complete the Robocup Junior Australia Line Rescue Challenge, I realised that there were some additional considerations and advice that will help take your robots to the next level.

The idea of this article is not to provide solutions, but to make teams aware of issues and problems they make encounter, so they can make their hardware and software more robust and capable.

Good Luck.

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The previous article in this series covered how to find the victim in the rescue zone for the Robocup Junior Australia Line Rescue challenge:

• #Robotics Finding objects with an Ultrasonic sensor

This article covers the steps needed to complete the rescue depending on the division you are competing in; Primary or Secondary (control only or control and lift).

[Edit] From 2026 Rules: Open Rescue now uses an evacuation zone with black and silver balls similar to the international rescue rules. This new division is not covered in this article.

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This is almost the final article explaining the techniques to handle the challenges your robot will face during the line rescue division of Robocup Junior Australia competition.

Your robot should now be able to navigate all the way through the course following the line and handling intersections and obstacles in its path. The final part of the challenge is the rescue and this article discusses the first part of the rescue process…. finding the victim.

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Keeping the momentum going, here is the next article in this series to help you prepare of the Robocup Junior Australia competition.

Your robot should now be able to line follow and navigate intersection markers successfully, so the next task is to make sure it can handle obstacles (previously known as the water tower) that might be placed in front of it. This challenge can be a little tricky as the robot will need to leave the line and then find the line again to continue line following.

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The Robocup Junior WA State Competition for 2019 is just around the corner, so I thought I would get back to writing some more of the blogs in this series.

So far we have concentrated on building and programming of a Line Following Robot, but we have not discussed the handling of intersections or shortcuts. These are the green squares which indicate the direction a robot should turn when it reaches an intersection.

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