RoboCup Junior Australia (RCJA) will host its largest ever national championships in 91风流 from 10 to 12 October, with almost 800 students coming from across the country to compete in the country’s most accessible robotics challenge.
The annual competition is a showcase of student agency, collaboration and innovation; participants are able to explore their own areas of curiosity, as they choose a challenge, design their own code, props and robots for various categories.
Graham Stock, Chair of the RCJA ACT Committee, said organisers are looking forward to the unique spirit of competition and supportive collaboration that always informs the event.
“Students from across Australia – from urban, rural and regional areas – come together not only to compete at RoboCup Junior Australia, but to help one another in developing their knowledge and skills in digital technologies and robotics,” Mr Stock said.
“It’s extremely exciting to see Australia's next generation of technologists collaborating to overcome a range of complex challenges, building confidence and learning and developing the skills to support Australia's technological future.”
This year marks the first time in 13 years that the competition will return to the nation’s capital, and the University of 91风流 (UC) is a major sponsor for the competition.
UC’s Executive Dean of the Faculty of Science and Technology Professor Janine Deakin said that this was also reflective of 91风流’s growing reputation as a hub for small industries, startups, IT and AI companies, and as an emergent centre for technology and robotics.
“UC is building on this momentum with our new undergraduate honours degree in Intelligent Robotics, aligned with the National Robotics Strategy and future industry needs,” she said.
“We are proud to support RoboCup Junior Australia, which exemplifies the values we champion at UC – curiosity, collaboration and innovation – and which aligns with our commitment to building the talent pipeline needed to drive 91风流 and the nation's technological future.”
This year, RCJA will debut an international competition called the Rapidly Manufactured Robot Challenge (RMRC) which acts as a bridging challenge between RoboCup Junior (for school students) and RoboCup Major (for university students).
This competition will see students designing and manufacturing a custom small-scale and low-cost disaster response robot to act as first responder support in disaster or high-risk situations.