Australian Robocup Junior Open Championships

Year 8 students Curtis Ridsdale, Vincent Stanner, Minnie Stojevski and Pearl Sachdeva recently travelled to Canberra to compete in the 2025 Robocup Junior Australian Open National Championship. 

After finishing second in the state competition, the students had worked hard after school and during the holidays to prepare to compete at the highest level of robotics competition in Australia. 

While the team arrived enthusiastically ready for competition on Saturday, the day proved frustrating due to the MDF surface the students were to perform their robotics routine (a recreation of the 1980’s cartoon Transformers) was different to the vinyl they use in South Australia. In particular, the innovative Optimus creation by Curtis, that amazingly transforms from robot to vehicle, had difficulties as the wheel spin picked up too much of the wooden surface creating friction issues and consequently the performance did not do what it needed to.

To the student’s credit, they worked for many hours on Saturday afternoon to overcome these difficulties for Sunday’s second performance. Using some very clever thinking, the group used cut balloons on the tyres to counteract the dust on the surface and create the grip needed for the robot to do what it needed to do.

Despite a fantastic second performance, they were unable to place in the top three and were unlucky not to win the Innovation Award for their transforming robots. The team placed around sixth out of 22 teams which is still an amazing performance in a very competitive division.

Congratulations to all participants on your effort, resilience, courage and creativity in overcoming a major obstacle and for being such great representatives of Trinity College. 

Source: Simon Coad, Trinity College Robocup Coordinator