João Pessoa, Brazil, RoboCup 2014

We set off for the world championship when most students were already enjoying their well-earned holidays. In SERŠ TEAM, competing in Rescue B Junior, students Matjaž Kajba and Simon Perkovič were at such a big competition for the first time. This time the world championship was held in João Pessoa, Brazil — quite a distance from Slovenia: the journey from Maribor to our hotel in Brazil took a full 40 hours, most of it, of course, waiting at airports.

The competition ran entirely in Brazilian style, meaning none of the organisers worried too much if something didn't work, if the arenas weren't set up on time, or if there were long delays.

At the competition itself we had big problems with our robot's hardware, as one thing after another failed. The students fixed every problem as it came up, but the robot behaved exactly according to Murphy's law — as soon as they fixed one thing, something else broke…

Despite all the problems, the world championship's technical committee gave us a special award for the best electronics — the Award for Best Electronics — which exceeded the goal we had set ourselves before the competition.

Congratulations to both students, who proved once again that SERŠ Maribor is among the best in the world.

Thank you to all our sponsors — Nanoelektronika, Yaskawa, Elektro Maribor and FERI Maribor — who helped us take part in this competition.