From 18-20 October 30 students from Melbourne High School travelled to Brisbane to compete in the RoboCup Junior Australia National Championships. Nine teams from years 10 and 11 competed in the Secondary Rescue, Standard Soccer, and Open Soccer divisions.
Secondary Rescue requires teams to build a robot to build and program a robot to avoid obstacles while following a line to rescue a victim from a simulated chemical spill. It is one of the largest RoboCup divisions in Australia. Congratulations to team 9L (Lachlan Huang, Daniel Joseph, Jake Lai, and Leo Zheng) for placing 29th in Australia.
In soccer teams must build two robots that play soccer autonomously against another team. Several Melbourne High School teams placed competitively in the Standard Soccer division this year. A special mention to team HAZKHEM (Zuhayer Farabi, King Win Foong, Harshad Gurumoorthy, and Aadi Ray) for placing 9th and just missing out on finals. Congratulations to team The Dynamite Strat (Joachim Bernardo, Gabriel Kwan, Bao Nguyen, and Jack Silcot) for placing second after the round robin stage. They then won their quarter-final but were unfortunately eliminated in a very competitive semi final.
In Open Soccer Melbourne High School student Starr Yang competed solo in team HIKARI. Starr’s performance in the round robin stage qualified him for the grand final against defending champions Brisbane Boys College. In a suspense filled gamed, Melbourne High School narrowly beat Brisbane Boys College (7-5) to be the Australian Open Soccer Champions. Melbourne High School has now been invited to represent Australia in Brazil next year at the RoboCup Junior International Championships.
Thank you to Mr Dean Griffiths and Mr Paul Drew for their support accompanying the students on the trip.
Peter Drew
Robotics Coordinator
