Contestants from over 40 countries tasked with creating robots for one of three scenarios: A soccer match between two robot teams, a choreographed dance, or a rescue robot that can identify victims at disaster scenes and navigate to safety.
A team of ninth graders from a Rehovot high school won the international robotics competition RoboCup 2013 in Holland with their robotic re-enactment of a Jewish wedding. The students returned to Israel Wednesday night with the first place trophy.
The competition included contestants from more than 40 countries, including the U.S., Australia, Slovenia and Turkey. The students had been tasked with creating robots to act out one of three scenarios: A soccer match between two 2-person robot teams, a choreographed dance, or a rescue robot that can identify victims at disaster scenes and navigate to safety.
“We [the students and I] built bride and groom robots that, using sensors, know to enter the wedding canopy and start dancing. The robots we built are considered tall, at 1.3 meters [4 feet], and that also impressed people in the competition,” Sarit Zaltsman, the teacher in charge of the robotics division at the high school said. Zaltsman accompanied her students throughout the competition.
“Our robots were well constructed, I know this will help me in the future,” student and team member Daniel Golub said.
