Hello everyone! I hope you’re all doing well. I’d like to make a suggestion to the RoboCupJr organization. Now that I’m already 19 years old and can no longer participate in the competitions, I came up with the idea of proposing the creation of a new league, similar to maze, line, and soccer, but with stricter rules regarding measurements, weights, and restrictions on purchased hardware. We would develop the hardware ourselves. This way, we could continue to take part in RoboCup, as one of the main obstacles often is the lack of financial budget to buy expensive hardware and materials, like carbon fiber. Another issue is that RoboCup is currently a league for universities, but it would be great if they could establish a league for hobbyists, allowing them to showcase their developments as well. What do you all think about this idea?
there seem to be a fair amount of former RoboCupJunior Participants (and mentors as well) that would love to show what they can do and build amazing robots. The RoboCup Federation would ideally like former RoboCupJunior participants to move to RoboCup Major. Is that something you have considered? Adding more leagues is somewhat difficult because it costs space in the venues, the limited time that the volunteers organizing the competitions have and of course money - which is not to say that I would not love to see the robots that RCJ alumni would come up with.
we (at least daivd and me) most certainly love your excitement for robocup but as david mentioned, adding leagues is an extremely difficult endeavor and there is a pathway in place already for your situation - RoboCup Major.
There is much more concern for the exact opposite side of the spectrum which is tight budget and limited knowledge (i.e. newcomers).
To give you some hope though; we recently talked about a little event for our own entertainment mostly among the volunteers.
Hey David,
I am considering participating in the RoboCup Major but one of the biggest problems is that the leagues that the RoboCup Major has in all of them universities participate among them I am not aware of any major team that is formed by former RoboCupJr participants which makes that the people who participate in the RoboCupJr do not go to the RoboCup Major is as I mentioned most of the teams are universities with large funding and mentors with many years of experience in various areas from electronics to mechanics to programming etc… being difficult for us to participate in the RoboCup Major leagues. My idea was to have an entry league for the RoboCup Major as is the case of the rescue line in RoboCupJr.
I’m super happy with this news
how will the former RoboCupJr participants be contacted? in my case I only participated in the European in Guimarães in 2022 can I go too? Do you already have a list of countries where it will take place? what will this meeting consist of? are we going to have to develop a robot for some test?
RoboCup 2024 is going to be in Eindhoven 2024 July 17th to 21st, European I think I heard (I didn’t find anything official though) is going to be Hannover again (in which case it would be during IdeenExpo which is 8th to 16th of June.
I don’t think there are concrete plans yet for the alumni competition thing.
