RoboCup Junior Slovakia 2008

(see also summary 2007, or slovenská verzia)

Pavel Petrovič, 6.5.2008.

During the first two days in May the School Computing Centre of Institute of Education Information and Prognoses (ŠVS ÚIPŠ) was filled by more than 150 people who came to have fun with robots - most of them being kids from elementary and secondary schools. The Contest in Building and Programming Robots for Elementary and Secondary Schools was arranged by Slovak Society of Electronics, ŠVS ÚIPŠ, and association Robotika.SK. This year we were happy to welcome international teams from Austria, Hungary (with their dancing RoboNova robot), and Czech Republic - Litomyšl.

The contest traditionally consists of four disciplines:

• RoboSoccer
• RoboRescue
• RoboDance
• Construction

The news this year was a change of style in the Construction category. In the previous years, the contestants were given a theme and were to build an arbitrary model (i.e. tourism, sport, agriculture, etc.) This year, the teams were to solve a specific task, which the contestants did not know about in advance, and the contestants were to build, program, and tune their robots during the time of 5 hours to get the highest score. Even though the task was challenging, the new format was appreciated by the contestants, and we believe the contest was not less creative, but the judging was more objective. The task specification is available here:

RCJ2008SK - Construction task

The task was a modified task from this years World Robot Olympiad contest.

The fights in the RoboCup Junior categories were close, exciting and on a good level, comparable to the world championship. The spectators could see omnidirectional drive, robots that were driven by different controllers than LEGO, and a wide spectrum of used sensors and programming environments.

For detailed results, please visit: Results page.

If you have any photos, please upload them here), and drop us a message with your comments or ideas.

• Organizers photos (Damian a Miro)