Little Disclaimer
All of this took place when I was in High School, which was about two years ago at the time of writing (29/05/2023). Yeah, I’m a bit late, for some reason I have always postponed getting this out, even though the times I spent in the lab were the most amazing (yet somehow some of the most stressful sometimes) I’ve had in my life.
Bit of backstory
I went to a technical High School, the ITIS G. Galilei in Rome. This was certainly a difficult decision at the time, as, in my country, techinal schools are often seen as a place for people who don’t want to study and just learn some pratical stuff to work as soon as they finished school. And me, having always done well in school, I was pressured by people around me, even the teachers, to do something seen a bit “higher” than technical.
The point was (and is) that I am a technical guy. I enjoy tinkering with computers, electronics and robotics, I always did. I have such a profound love for understanding stuff I cannot even explain. So I after a lot of thinking, I made my decision.
Part of the decision was also that I knew that this school had a robotics lab. And it was not some “Hey, look! we have an arduino and some motors” lab, they made real robots that played soccer on their own! And they competed in worldwide RoboCup competitions! Heck, those guys won the RoboCup worldwide competition! First discovering this world was so incredible to me at 11, and even more incredible was having a chance to enter it in High School.
So anyway, I know I have to wait up until my third year (of five) to join the team. This policy made sense, considering the programmes of each year. But in the mean time, I made sure to start knowing the place, and the teachers who ran it, and let them know me (in a positive way, of course).
My third year I officially joined the team as a programmer. My job: make the robots work. They have to play soccer, two versus two, and they have to do it on their own, no remote control allowed by the rules.
What follows is a telling of my time there, with my teammates, my friends and my teachers. I stayed in the lab until I graduated (actually, I stayed a bit more). During this time me and my team took part in 4 different competitions:
By the rules, participants in the RoboCup Junior Soccer Lightweight League can only take part in two international competitions, so my second year at the lab (and my fourth out of five at school) should have been my last year actively competing. However, all the competitions of 2020 got cancelled because of covid-19 restrictions. So I got a bonus year, I guess?
RoboCup Junior Soccer Lightweight
I think RoboCup does a better job at explaining itself that I will ever be able to do Put basically, RoboCup is a worldwide federation which organizes challenges centered around AI and robotics, aimed at schools and university, made for students to learn, discover and expand on the subjects. I personally think that putting research in the form of a game and a competition is extremely exciting, while also incredibly effective.
At school, we took part in the Junior Soccer League: two team of two robots each face each other on a small field mimicking a soccer field, one goal on each of the shorter sides. The robots follow a special ball with the objective to score a point in the opponent’s goal. On the field there’s a smaller rectangle marked with white lines, which the robots must never get out of, or they get a 1-minute penalty out of the field
To qualify for a place at the RoboCup, a team must first win its local tournament. In Italy, that’s the RomeCup: the team that gets 1st place at the RomeCup qualifies for a place at RomeCup WorldWide for the current year. 2nd and 3rd place each qualify for a place at the Continental (in this case European) tournament.
To be continued…
If you want to read more about what we actually did each year, go back to the Index Page and read in order.