It might not have been Old Trafford, but Rossmoyne Senior High School students still claimed a historic soccer win in Adelaide earlier this month, taking home the national title in the RoboCup Australia soccer challenge.
The Rossmoyne students, all members of the school’s robotics club, claimed the State title in September, granting them entry into the National championships.
In robot soccer, students are required to design, build, and program two robots to compete in a dynamic game of soccer against an opposing pair of robots.
Soccer robots must be fully autonomous, so they need to employ a variety of sensors to find the ball, point in the right direction, and stay inside the playing area.
Competing in the standard soccer division, all teams were required to use LEGO parts, apart from certain sensors that pick up the ball, which emits infrared light, with the robots a maximum of 1kg and required to fit within a 22cm cylinder size limit.
Team captain Yuet Long Feng said that travelling to Adelaide for the three-day National Championships was daunting, despite their win in the State titles.
“It was super scary at first,” he said.
“Compared to State, Nationals included a lot more competition, the teams were way stronger and we didn’t even know if we would qualify.”
The length of the tournament allows teams to make vital changes to their robots, and Yuet said that after a disappointing first day of competition, the team made the decision to make a change that proved crucial to their title hopes.
“Every night we made huge changes to our robots to improve them.
“The most significant change, the sensor we use to detect the ball is a disc-like sensor.
“It has a top and bottom and obviously we used it with the top side up.
“Once we got into the competition, we realised the other teams were putting it upside down because there’s less interference and the sensor would be more accurate.”
Getting through to the final elimination rounds, Yuet said his team had no expectation they could win.
“We thought we were going to get second because the opposing team was very strong,” he said.
“We got extremely lucky, we managed to get the win and everyone was cheering, it was an amazing feeling.”
Rossmoyne Senior High School head of maths David Tan accompanied the team after Robotics Club teacher Siok Gan was unable to attend.
Mr Tan said he had a steep learning curve, but was extremely impressed with the students.
“I knew they used LEGO robots but apart from that, I had no idea,” he said.
“I did a lot of studying, a lot of reading to catch up on.
“The students performed really well, there’s a lot of hidden talent.
“It’s a club, it’s not a standard class so often you don’t get to see what the students are doing but when you do, it’s remarkable.”
