Skills for the Future in Robocup Junior State Competition

Four teams of students represented the College at the Robocup Junior – Queensland State Competition 2019 at the UQ Centre at St Lucia campus, Saturday 10 August. This is only our second year attending this very established and challenging competition, and our first year with a Junior School team.

Our students in the Open Rescue were competing against very experienced teams. Over the day, they were presented with five complex rescue maps that their robot had to follow, ‘rescuing’ items along the way. It is not called a challenge for nothing and our teams were resourceful and are to be commended for their perseverance.

Our Senior School OnStage team completed two very well-executed performances with their robot and had to participate in an interview where they had to explain their code, design of their robot and use of sensors. Our girls also did a fantastic job of stepping up on the day and mentoring our younger students, providing them with both technical and moral support.

Part of the challenge, is that once the time starts for the day, teachers and mentors are not allowed in the Robot work area, meaning our students have to be truly autonomous as they work to improve their code, and sometimes their robot build, between the rounds. Our Junior School OnStage team used the time after their first performance, to make further changes to the code to great benefit, resulting in an excellent second performance. For our Junior School team, their ability to manage their time, be focused, resilient, agile and work as a team were invaluable skills that they demonstrated on the day.

All of our students can be very proud of their achievements and the amount of work they did in preparation in the lead up to the competition and on the day and their continued growth in robotics and coding.

Our thanks to Andrew Hawtin and Nicola Boone for running our Robotics Clubs in the Senior and Junior School and providing our students with these opportunities. We would also like to thank Dr. Nick Hockings from CSIRO for his work in mentoring and supporting one of our Rescue Teams.