Student Robotics 2021 was Kickstarted today on our livestream. Peaking at just over a hundred concurrent viewers we welcomed teams from around the world, and it was great to see the competitors get familiar with the simulator.
Our game this year, Radars of the Lost Ark, challenges teams to score points by claiming territories using radios. Teams must navigate the arena scanning for tower transmissions and sending their own transmissions back to claim territories. Teams are awarded points at the end of the match for the maximum extent of their territory at any one time. Full details, including the prizes available this year, are available in the rulebook.
As this competition year doesn’t feature a physical competition event, the
structure of the competition has changed. The league matches will take place on
four weekends through the year. After each league session the game will gain
additional modules that will present new and different challenges to the
competitors. The competition will culminate on May 1st 2021 with a the
knockouts and grand final.
This year’s teams have already been strategising their approach, and we can’t wait to see their progress over the year!
If you weren’t able to attend Kickstart this year, or would like a recap, you can:
watch our livestream where we explain the game and how this year’s competition will work.
download the presentation in which we explain this year’s game and how the competition is running this year.
download the microgames which are small activities designed to let you become familiar with the Student Robotics simulator.
We’re excited to announce that registration for the 2021 season of Student
Robotics is now open!
Unfortunately, we were unable to find a way to run a physical competition in a
COVID safe way. Instead, following on from the success of our
previous virtual competition,
we will be running the competition in a simulated environment.
The competition cycle will start with a live streamed Kickstart event
on 21st November at which the game will be announced and the simulator shown off to teams.
The competition, which will take on May 1st 2021, will
see the robots compete through a league stage and a seeded knockout. As usual,
the prizes will recognise not only the teams which come top in the knockouts,
but also those who excel in other ways.
In addition to the main competition we will be running monthly league sessions
(starting in January) which will seed your position in the final knockout.
Details of the game and prizes will be revealed at Kickstart. Details of the
Kickstart can be found on its event page and competition events
will be published when they are available. We expect to confirm places before
Kickstart.
If you would like a chance to compete in Student Robotics 2021,
please fill in the entry form with the required information.
Congratulations to JAMDynamics who take victory in a tie-breaker match after a
strong performance in the league and knockout stages.
The Challenge: Two Colours
The virtual arena with its central raised platform
Our game this year, Two Colours, challenged teams retrieve gold or silver
coloured tokens from on and around a raised platform in the centre of the arena.
Having these tokens within their scoring zone (i.e. their corner of the arena)
at the end of the match would earn them 3 points apiece. However, if a robot
gathered more than one token colour within their scoring zone, each token’s
value drops from 3 points to 1 point. Full details of the game and the awards
available this year are available in the rulebook.
Our competition event this year was rather different to normal as COVID-19
prevented our usual weekend event. Instead the competition took place over
three weekends, with matches being livestreamed from within a simulator.
While this changed many aspects of the competition, the core challenge to create
an autonomous robot remained the same.
The Final
This year’s final featured four teams who had all proven their capabilities
throughout the competition. All robots got off to a strong start, though
JAMDynamics and Lawrence Sheriff School soon took a lead. However, later in the
match, the “poisoning” effect of having mixed tokens in a scoring zone changed
everything leaving all four teams with the same number of points.
This tie for first place lead to a tie-breaker match, played between the same
four teams though with their starting corners changed. Once again the
reliability of these four robots showed, with each collecting a token inside the
one minute mark. In the end it was JAMDynamics’ robot which was able to collect
three silver tokens, including one stolen from Hills Road Sixth Form College
second team’s scoring zone, which took victory.
While we weren’t able to see them in person, we saw some brilliant robot designs
and were continually impressed by the progress made throughout the year, both
posted online and at the Tech Days. Even during the virtual competition, it was
great to see the robot code improving week to week. We hope you enjoyed the
competition as much as we did!
If you didn’t take part, or you want to enter again next year, the
sign up page for next year’s competition will be
up later in the year. Get a team together and start talking to your teachers now!
With a dominating 111 league points, Kenilworth Sixth Form not only placed
highest among the rookie teams but placed highest overall in the league.
Especially given the changes to the competition through the year, beating other
more experienced teams is a remarkable feat.
The Committee Award is given for extraordinary ingenuity or simple elegance in
the design of their solution. Team SWI from South Wilts Grammar School earned
this prize for an impressive path-finding algorithm within their code. The
judges were additionally impressed by the clarity of the code and supporting
documentation, something which is easily overlooked when writing code. This also
showed in their robot’s performance, which was reliably able to navigate around
the central pedestal to collect tokens from the far side.
We also encourage teams to share their progress towards their robots throughout
the year. Team MAI from Gymnasium Markt Indersdorf earned the Online Presence
Award for their ongoing blog posting during both the lead-up to the physical
competition and after lockdown began as well as for their activity on the forums.
For full details on all the awards, please see the rulebook.
You can see a breakdown of scores for each match, as well as the overall league
ranking on the competition website.
Rewatch the streams
If you’d like to relive the highs and lows of the competition livestreams, the videos remain available on YouTube, as well as a cut-down video of the spectacular final and tie breaker:
Of course, this competition would not be possible without the tireless work of
our volunteers, who developed the simulated world the competition
was run in and enabled us to switch to a virtual competition. If you’d like to
get involved in organising future competitions, from developing the software and
hardware used by the teams to the events themselves we’re always looking for
people to join our team.
Notes to editors
Student Robotics is an annual robotics competition for 16-18 year-olds in the UK
and Europe. It was founded in 2006 by university students and is free to enter
thanks to our sponsors and many volunteers. Since it was first run
in 2008, the final competition has grown from one room at the University of
Southampton1 to the UK’s biggest autonomous robotics competition.
At the start of the academic year, teams are given a kit containing custom-made
electronics at a Kickstart event, where the game for the year is announced. They
then have until the start of the Easter holiday to build fully-autonomous robots
which will compete against each other in the final competition. They are
supported by volunteer mentors, and software to assist them in programming their
robots is provided.
If you would like to find out more, please get in touch.
The SR Team
Student Robotics is independent from the University of Southampton. ↩
