The KickStart event for this year has happened, the rules have been declared and the competition is underway. A number of teams have already started building their robots and the competition this year is sure to be fierce. With a whole host of new teams, as well as veterans that have been competing since the beginning, we (the Blueshirts) are looking forward to seeing some amazing robotic creations from the competitors.

If you’ve got a blog/youtube video/anything else awesome you’d like to share with us feel free to email info@studentrobotics.org or tweet us @StudentRobotics.

The forums and the IDE will be available shortly.

The annual Student Robotics KickStart is coming up this Saturday! It is with this event that SR2013 begins. Teams from around the country will be attending to meet other competitors, discover this year’s game, and learn about the challenges ahead of them.

Information for registered teams:

KickStart will be happening on Saturday the 3rd of November — please aim to arrive at 9:00. We’ll be starting in Building 32 on the University of Southampton’s Highfield Campus, please see the campus map (pdf) and this street map, showing the location of the campus. The day will finish at around 15:30, and we will be handing out kit then. This will include 2m aluminium L-sections, so please be sure you can transport them.

The schedule for the day is as follows:

• 10:00 - Arrival
• 10:30 - Introductory talk, introduction to the game etc
• 11:00 - Mini-game and competition
• 12:50 - Break for lunch
• 14:00 - Talk: Mechanics
• 14:30 - Talk: Electronics
• 15:00 - Short break, with biscuits and tea
• 15:20 - Talk: Software
• 15:50 - Talk: Teamwork and organisation
• 16:20 - Kit collection

We’ll be putting out signs indicating places to park on campus. Unfortunately, we cannot provide food — we recommend either bringing your own lunch or visiting one of the shops around and about the campus.

We very much hope to see you there!

The SR Team

Today we opened up registration for the upcoming edition of our competition, SR2013. The rules for the game the robots will play will be announced at our kickstart event at the beginning of October. Teams will then have just over six months to construct their robots before the competition in April 2013.

If you have a team of 16-18 year-olds that you would like to register for the competition, please fill out this registration form and we will get in touch with you as soon as we can. Thanks to our sponsors, we can accept 36 teams for this year’s competition.