Okanagan College Hosts 10th Annual RoboCup Junior Games

Hundreds of B.C. students are in Kelowna for a battle of both brains and bots.

On Friday, December 11th, 45 teams of students from 13 different schools throughout British Columbia will be going head-to-head at the 10th annual Western Canada RoboCup Junior Games.

Hosted by Okanagan College’s Electronic Engineering Department, RoboCup Junior is an internationally accredited educational competition for students ranging in age from around grade five until 12.

Teams are tasked with working together to design and develop robots that will complete a series of exciting yet challenging tasks.

Equipped with their bots, B.C. students head to the arena to play some robo-soccer, do a bit of dancing, and rescue a sad makeshift pop-can victim.

“In soccer, two autonomous mobile robots track a special light-emitting ball in an enclosed field and attempt to score goals. In rescue, robots follow a course, negotiate uneven terrain and identify victims within re-created disaster scenarios,” said Okanagan College representative Christine Ulmer.

Grade nine student Carissa Harasym came all the way from Salmon Arm with her team to represent King’s Christian School in this year’s RoboCup Junior Games.

As her team prepared for the Search and Rescue component, she said she is a little nervous but very excited to participate in such a fun and innovative event.

“I think this is great,” said Harasym. “What a great opportunity for everyone who wants to come and just try stuff like this.”

Nadir Ould-khessal, Chair of the Electronic Engineering Department at Okanagan College, is happy to host this event, as it’s a great opportunity for students to apply the computer programming and engineering skills they’ve learned in the classroom to a fun, real-life scenario.

There will be an award ceremony for the students on Friday afternoon at around 2:30 p.m, and the top three winners in each category will qualify to compete in the World RoboCup held in Leipzig, Germany in the summer of 2016.