Four teams from Shire Christian recently competed at the 25th Junior RoboCup National Competition, held at the University of Queensland in Brisbane. The event welcomed 234 teams from across Australia and Asia Pacific region. Nationals is a great opportunity for students to showcase their robotics skills, collaborate with peers, and compete in various categories like Soccer, Rescue, Maze and On Stage.
Our teams represented our school in Riley Rescue and On Stage. For Rescue Riley we had two teams - Year 6 - Seth Veltmeyer, Tom Ashton and from Year 7 - Adriel Tsui, Henry Snaith, Nathan Donaldson and Matthew Wheeler.
Our On Stage teams were, Year 6 - Mia Love, Emmie O’Neill, Caitlyn King and from Year 8 - Annabel Ashton, Willow Macpherson, and Joel Veltmeyer. Three other valuable members of our teams (Elise Elder - Yr 6, Matthew Lothian - Yr 6 and Ben Chambers - Yr 8) were unfortunately unable to make it to Brisbane, but they were very much still part of the teams preparations and results.
Riley Rescue
Robots compete by following a winding line on a series of tiles to a designated rescue area, on the way they may encounter obstacles and bridges that will challenge the most intrepid programmer. After negotiating the randomly selected path, the robot arrives at a green coloured area which indicates a chemical spill. While the clock is still ticking the robot must find “the victim” ( silver can) before pushing them out of the chemical spill to safety.
Our Rescue teams completed 9 challenging courses over the two days of competition. Our Year 7 team progressed to the finals and placed 4th overall, with our Year 6 team not far behind in 8th position out of 31 teams. This was a fantastic achievement, for our first year competing in line rescue. The teams worked hard to design and build well engineered line following robots and had great success applying a variety of strategies and well written code to score highly in each round. They were a credit to our school, supporting each other and encouraging other teams. A special congratulations to Seth and Tom who received the Line Rescue Encouragement trophy for their well-mannered and positive interactions with judges and other teams.
On Stage
The On Stage competition, challenges teams to design, build, and program robots to perform to music or tell a story. Across the two days, there were 34 teams competing in Novice and Open divisions, each completing three performances and one 20-minute interview to explain their original builds and complexity of code - a huge undertaking. Between our two teams they had 14 robots, many props and costumes. The creativity, collaboration and growth in their coding abilities and engineering of original builds, was evident through their near perfect performances throughout the competition.
Our Year 8 team - ‘Poor Unfortunate Souls’, competed in the Open On Stage competition, progressing to the finals. They came 2nd overall after an international team and first in our national competition- an outstanding result.
Our Year 6 team - 'The Ozians', who are the current NSW first place winners in the Novice division, came up against some very tough competition and although they did not place were commended for their original builds and creative performances.
Leading up to Nationals, all teams worked tirelessly Thursday afternoons, lunchtimes (too many to count) and several days in the holiday break.
Special thanks to Mrs Veltmeyer who not only supported all our teams and myself, but had the added pressure of watching her two boys compete in On stage and Riley Rescue. Thank you also to Mr Pinn for being an assistant mentor and encouraging our teams to come up with innovative ideas and code - his prayers and encouraging emails during the competition were much needed. Thank you to the Elder, Lothian and Chambers families, who were unable to travel to Brisbane, however, cheered us on from Sydney, staying in regular contact, encouraging and supporting us all over the weekend.
A HUGE thank you to the families of our very first National Robocup Team. Although some families and team members were fighting sickness, others had flights cancelled and had to be picked up from the Gold Coast by another of our families to make it in time, or were feeling under pressure when robots were having technical issues, they rallied behind each other, helping and supporting wherever they saw a need. God sustained and strengthened us all.
Mrs Leonie Hampson (with co-contributors - Willow Macpherson and Annabel Ashton)
Junior School Enrichment Coordinator
“We really enjoyed working together with all the other teams! It was so much fun getting to know each other and helping the younger teams out. We want to thank the parents and families for making this trip possible for all of us. A big thanks to Mrs Veltemeyer for also traveling up with us, and a big thanks to Mr Pinn for helping us make our builds better. The biggest thanks goes to Mrs Hampson and Mr Hampson for driving all the way up to Brisbane with all our robots, making sure we were prepared, and moving all our equipment around. We will never forget this amazing experience.” Willow and Annabel
Back to All News