At the “NORDMETALL RoboCup Junior” competition for school pupils at Hamburg University of Technology, almost 70 pupils from northern Germany competed against each other in various disciplines with self-built robots on the first weekend in March.
Robots on the course and on stage
The participants were able to compete in three disciplines: In the rescue competitions “Rescue Line” (for experienced participants) and “Rescue Line Entry” (for beginners), the small robots ran through a course and provided assistance in a rescue scenario. To do this, they had to independently navigate around obstacles, overcome seesaws and ramps and, at the end, find and retrieve balls representing fictitious casualties. The tasks were based on challenges that have to be mastered by real search and rescue robots. In the “OnStage” discipline, participating teams put on a performance together with their robots: they acted out fairy tales or told a story they had developed themselves. Points were awarded for various sections, subtasks and requirements.
The best teams qualified for the German championship of the “RoboCup Junior” competition from March 12-16, 2025 in Nuremberg. In the accompanying program of the tournament, the “RoboCup Major” team of the TU Hamburg - the HULKs - showed their work in live demonstrations. The HULKs are the robots with which students from the Technical University of Hamburg are competing in the main RoboCup competition.
About the “RoboCup”
The “RoboCup” is the largest competition for intelligent robots and one of the world's most important technology events in research and education. One part of it is the “RoboCup Junior”. The junior competition at TU Hamburg is one of eight Germany-wide qualifying tournaments for the German championship of the Robo Cup Junior, the so-called “RoboCup German Open”. 557 teams across Germany are competing to take part. The robotics competition is open to students aged 10 to 19. RoboCup Junior tournaments have been held annually in Germany since 2001. This is the seventh time that TU Hamburg has been the qualifying venue for northern Germany.
Further Information: https://dual.tuhh.de/robocup-junior
