Registration for Student Robotics 2016 is now open and, as always, it is
completely free to take part. You can register your interest in entering a team
for the next Student Robotics competition and we’ll get back to you as soon as
possible.
The competition will kick off towards the end of October, where teams will
attend one of our Kickstart events. Teams will be introduced to the SR2016 game,
the Student Robotics Kit and set a series of small challenges to help them
familiarise themselves with the Kit. Help will be on hand throughout the day
from our growing team of university and industry mentors.
After spending six months carefully designing, constructing and testing their
robots, teams will come together for the main competition in April 2016. Here,
their robot will be pitted against all of the other teams’ robots. Over two
days, through a battle of minds and engineering prowess, the robots and teams
will have to prove themselves with reliable and consistent performance.
So, if you have a team of 16-18 year-olds who think they have what it takes to
be crowned the winners of SR2016, please register your interest and we will get
in touch with you as soon as we can.
All the competitors and Blueshirts on the stands at Newbury Racecourse. Photograph courtesy of Rich Barlow.The winning team, Bishop Wordsworth's School, with Philip Su, Director of Facebook London Engineering Office. Photograph courtesy of Tyler Ward.
Addressing all of the competitors before the prize-giving, Philip Su, director
of Facebook’s London engineering office, said: “This has been an amazing thing
to witness; I love the ingenuity and the creativity, and I hope that you
continue to choose the path that you’re on.
I wish I had opportunities like this when I was younger, because I was an
engineer at heart when I was young, and I often felt made fun of. I felt
outcast. But this is the thing you find out after you graduate from Uni, and
you can trust me on this: that image of engineering is wrong. It turns out you
are Tony Stark. It turns out you are Tris Prior. You are divergent, but you’re
also erudite, and you’re dauntless, and you will rule the world. I promise you
this: pursue the thing that you love, and you will one day rule the world.
Student Robotics 2015 was the first to feature only new-generation kit, with USB
Servo and Power Boards, and a Brain Board based on the ODROID U3. The
competition has now been running for eight years, and remains free for teams to
enter thanks to our sponsors and many volunteers.
The challenge: Capture the Flag
The 2015 arena layout
For this year’s game, the competitors had to build and program
robots to capture and keep as many flags (large wooden cubes on castors) as
possible within the three-minute games. Full details can be found in the
rulebook.
The standard remained high this year, with a wide variety of approaches. Many
teams chose to gamble on speed, dashing for the centre flag, bringing it back to
their zone, and guarding it for the rest of the match. Others chose a more
flexible approach, using their vision systems to adapt to the situation, often
attempting to steal flags from their rivals. King Edward VI Grammar School’s
approach was to drive slowly but carefully, a strategy which paid off, winning
them 3rd Place and the Rookie Award.
Prizes
Winning the knockout is not the only prize-worthy achievement at Student
Robotics. A complete list of prizes is shown below:
The team from Cranbrook School, who won the Committee Award. Photograph courtesy of Tyler Ward.
The Committee Award, given for a simple and elegant solution to the year’s
challenge, was awarded to Cranbrook School. The committee was impressed
by their simple but effective circular design, which had no need for moving
parts except for its two drive wheels.
The Rookie Award is for the rookie team who performed best in the knockouts.
The First Movement Award is given to the first rookie team to demonstrate a
moving robot.
The team from Gymnasium Markt Indersdorf, who won the Robot and Team Image Award. Photograph courtesy of Tyler Ward.
The Robot and Team Image prize is for the team which present themselves and
their robot in the most outstanding and stylish manner. The winners this year,
“42 * 2 - Double Vision” from Gymnasium Markt Indersdorf, came dressed as
monks in hooded brown robes, laced with glowing LED strips. Hoods were a major
theme this year, with Systemetric from Hills Road Sixth Form College
dressing as sinister black-cloaked “Aluminati”.
The Online Presence award is given to the team with the best website, social
media presence, or combination of the two.
For full details of the awards, please see the rulebook.
The teams
44 teams made it to the competition this year, 20 of whom came from schools or
colleges which had not competed before.
Student Robotics 2016 promises to be the biggest and best yet. If you’d like to
compete, see the Compete page for more
information. Start talking to your teachers and recruiting team members as soon
as possible!
Notes to editors
Student Robotics is an annual robotics competition for 16-18 year-olds in the UK
and Europe. It was founded in 2006 by university students and is free to enter
thanks to our sponsors and many volunteers.
Since it was first run in 2008, the final competition has grown from one room at
the University of Southampton1 to a two-day event for 54 teams and over 400
students.
At the start of the academic year, teams are given a kit containing custom-made
electronics at a Kickstart event, where the game for the year is announced. They
then have until the end of the Easter holiday to build fully-autonomous robots
which will compete against each other in the final competition. They are
supported by volunteer mentors, and software to assist them in programming their
robots is provided.
High resolution photographs of the event will be uploaded to the Flickr group.
For more information, please [get in touch][contact].
The Student Robotics Team
1. Student Robotics is independent from the University of Southampton. ↩
With the competition only two months away, we are now happy to announce that the Student Robotics 2015 competition will
take place on 25th and 26th April at Newbury Racecourse. 54 teams from the UK and Germany will compete
in a robotic Capture The Flag with the autonomous robots they have built over the last six months.
The teams will arrive on Saturday morning. The knockout matches will begin on Sunday, with the finals that afternoon.
The competition will be open to the public for the whole weekend, but we recommend coming along for the finals on Sunday
afternoon.
For further details please see the competition’s [event page][].
