Four students competed in two different categories.
Matjaž Kajba and Rok Mihailović Krpan competed in:
RoboCup Rescue Maze – searching for victims in a maze
Uroš Štok and Klemen Hercog competed in:
RoboCup Rescue CoSpace – a simulation with a virtual robot plus work with a real robot that collects marked victims
We flew from Graz via Frankfurt to Leipzig. This time we spent a little less time travelling than usual — we were there just over 8 hours after gathering in front of SERŠ.
As our first day in Germany was free, we explored the city centre together. Matjaž Kajba stayed at the hotel, as he still had a few things to fix on the robot.
The competition started very promisingly. Rok and Matjaž's robot worked far better than last year and scored 155 points in its very first run. Things went wrong with obstacles that got caught in a wheel, so they had to pause the run and didn't get all the available points, because after the interruption the robot could no longer find its way back to the start. After the first day we were 10th out of 24 teams. The second and third days also went very well. Even so, we finished 11th overall, which still puts us in the top half of all competing countries.
The other team did even better. On the first day they had a technical challenge, where Uroš and Klemen scored every available point. On the second day the group stage began, with the top two teams going through to the quarter-finals — which we managed without any problems.
The next day was the technical challenge in which students competed individually. Our Uroš Štok did best of all, scoring the most points of any competitor: 100. The runner-up scored 98.7 points, and everyone else under 60.
In the quarter-final we beat Japan by a wide margin. In the semi-final, though, luck wasn't on our side. Our program won the virtual part of the competition decisively, but the opposing team was too strong in the part where a real robot drove the maze, so we lost by a few points. We still played the match for 3rd place, but this time the Slovak team was too strong, winning 1930:1920 — by a whisker. So our boys took 4th place in this category.
Even so, both our teams received awards:
BEST STRATEGY (combined programming and technical challenge) – Uroš Štok and Klemen Hercog
BEST TEAM SPIRIT – Matjaž Kajba and Rok Mihailović Krpan
Junior party
I am very proud of the students who took part in this competition and congratulate them sincerely.
Robotics club mentor: Miran Waldhütter