There is just over a week to go before the SR2012 Competition!

Just over six months ago, this year’s Student Robotics competitors were tasked with building fully autonomous robots to play this year’s game, “Pirate Plunder”. In this game, robots race to collect cube-shaped tokens scattered randomly in the middle of the arena. Depositing these tokens into the bucket that each team has at the start of the match brings more points. However, teams can steal each other’s buckets, which means teams will need to make some interesting strategical decisions.

The competition will be taking place in Building 40, Highfield Campus, University of Southampton and is a two day event starting on Saturday 14th April at 9:30 AM. In a change to previous years, matches will start towards the end of the first day, so be sure that you don’t miss out! There will of course be time to work on your robot on the Saturday morning.

In addition, all team members must bring along their ticket, obtainable once a Media Consent Form has been received by Student Robotics. More details can be found on the SR2012 Competition Page.

We look forward to seeing you all there, good luck with the competition and may the best robot win!

The SR Team

This academic year’s Student Robotics competition, SR2012, is now fully launched. 24 teams of young people are now working to create autonomous robots to compete in this year’s game: Pirate Plunder.

Pirate Plunder has considerably more scope for interesting robot activity than our previous games. Autonomous robots will be racing to collect cube-shaped tokens, and get them back to the bucket in their home zone. Robots can also steal each other’s buckets, leading to an variety of possible tactics. The full rules of the game can be found in our documentation pages.

We’ve revamped our API to be more powerful and work together with existing libraries more easily. Our new libkoki-based vision system allows our competitor’s robots to easily determine where they are in the arena.

We’ll be here throughout the year providing teams with support both in person and through the forums.

The SR Team

The annual Student Robotics KickStart is coming up this Saturday! It is with this event that SR2012 begins. Teams from around the country will be attending to meet other competitors, discover this year’s game, and learn about the challenges ahead of them.

Information for registered teams:

KickStart will be happening on Saturday the 24th of September — please aim to arrive at 10:00. We’ll be starting in Building 32 on the University of Southampton’s Highfield Campus, please see the campus map (pdf) and this street map, showing the location of the campus. The day will finish at around 16:30, and we will be handing out kit then. This will include 2m aluminium L-sections, so please be sure you can transport them.

The schedule for the day is as follows:

• 10:00 - Arrival
• 10:30 - Introductory talk, introduction to the game etc
• 11:00 - Mini-game and competition
• 12:50 - Break for lunch
• 14:00 - Talk: Mechanics
• 14:30 - Talk: Electronics
• 15:00 - Short break, with biscuits and tea
• 15:20 - Talk: Software
• 15:50 - Talk: Teamwork and organisation
• 16:20 - Kit collection

We’ll be putting out signs indicating places to park on campus. Unfortunately, we cannot provide food — we recommend either bringing your own lunch or visiting one of the shops around and about the campus.

We very much hope to see you there!

The SR Team