RoboCup first impressions

Left to right, Jack Newton and Coleman Knabe work on
CHARLI immediately following a match at RoboCup.

Two members of this year’s RoMeLa team are new to the RoboCup competition, and enjoying their first visit to Mexico. Here’s their take on RoboCup...

“It’s pretty cool. The amount of energy you find in this place is astonishing, you’ve got all these teams that have come from across the world and they are working as hard as they possibly can to have the best robots they possibly can. And it’s really cool to see that. And I didn’t expect to see so many spectators. They keep on coming in, and they are cheering and yelling, and really interested in this stuff. It’s cool stuff.”

-Jack Newton, a rising senior in computer engineering, from Blacksburg, Va. 

“It’s exciting, long days. I started out with a lot of pep and energy, and now waking up each morning is increasingly difficult. Every team I have talked to is nice, out-going, and interested in each other’s robots, and I don’t think they are interested in each other’s robots because they want to steal designs or concepts or anything like that, rather, it’s almost like a conference for them. So they can get inspiration, ideas. It’s always good when you have a robot and see other deigns, what other people are doing, it’s almost like benchmarking … It’s a positive interest, and not a “let’s steal their ideas and come back next year.” And from my senior design project, we completely took apart a Darwin-OP and made an assembly manual, and there’s a team here from Hamburg, Germany, using that assembly manual. They say it’s a big help, and that is a big morale boost, a big positive feedback on my work.”

-Coleman Knabe, second-year master’s student in mechanical engineering, from Newport News, Va.