Sacred Heart College staged a successful RoboCup Junior State titles campaign at Curtin Stadium recently, with their team XXX taking out a keenly-contested robotic soccer competition. 

XXX were in a league of their own with a thumping 10-1 grand final win over SenpaiTech from Perth Modern School. 

XXX and fellow Sacred Heart team Da Boyz, who were eliminated earlier in the knockout stages, were the first WA teams to design omni-wheel standard robots – representing an impressive feat in getting their complex robots working at all. 

RoboCup is an international effort to foster Artificial Intelligence and robotics research with the ultimate goal that by the middle of the 21st century, a team of fully autonomous humanoid robot soccer players will play (and win) a soccer game against the (human) world champions. 

RoboCup Junior encourages young people to take an interest in scientific and technological fields and cultivates this through three different robotic competitions: Soccer; Rescue and On Stage. 

The Rescue competition mirrors the real life use of robots that rescue people from life-threatening situations, while in the On Stage contest participants challenge themselves to design, build and program their robots to dance to music. 

The Maze Rescue provided a clean sweep for Sacred Heart, with Terminally Confused winning by a handy margin that included the first “200 point” run in Australia. 

Beep Beep Beep finished second and the year seven team of Robo-Sapiens grabbed third in a close battle. 

The rapid improvement of standards at the State finals was reflected by 95 victims discovered, compared to none at the South Metro Regionals just a few months ago and 12 at the Northern Metro Regional. 

Team Pixels from Chisholm Catholic College placed third in the Secondary Rescue challenge, while in the On Stage performances, Santa Maria College took first and second places, and St Brigid’s College third in the Experienced category and Iona Presentation College’s Rainbots finished third in Novice. 

Sacred Heat College Head of Community Relations and Marketing Narelle Molloy was proud of the efforts. 

“At the end of the day, all our teams performed to a high standard,” she said. 

“It was very gratifying to get feedback from several schools praising our students on the ‘gracious professionalism’ they displayed assisting other teams. 

“The students have put an enormous amount of time and effort into reaching this standard, so if you see them around the College, please congratulate them for me. 

“They are all highly committed, as well as outstanding creative thinkers and problem solvers.”
 

Share this article.