Robocup Junior - The Experience

Robocup was the first robotics competition I had personally every attended. If I’m being honest it was a very fun and interesting experience. I had met a ton of cool and interesting people and joining PSR (Princeton Soccer Robotics) was one of the best decisions I’ve personally ever made. It was a crazy time and the amount I had learned plus the crazy experiences I had could honestly never be forgotten. While the Maker Fairs and the meetings every week were great, I feel the greatest experience I had was truly building the Robot. It was an amazing time and the grinding had all payed off for game day. While we hadn’t won, we came in third place nationally which obviously was a great win for me being that it was my first time in the competition.

The Maker Fairs #

Ther Maker Fairs were obviously one of my favorite parts of this entire experience being Robocup. PSR was fortunate enough to be given a stand for Maker Fair which was an amazing experience showing off past robots to new and unsuspecting members. We had a great time all around and I’m sure that Maker Fairs to come will be just as fun. Many if not all Maker Fairs have extremely fun attractions such as Battle Bots and Racing, just to name a few. All the other stands were super fun to go checkout. Interaction with the maker community can never disappoint.

The Designing #

When I built my robot my team was not very helpful in terms of the design process. I designed the entire robot mostly myself. I taught myself CAD (Computer Aided Design) and ECAD (Electrical Computer Aided Design) mainly used for designing PCBs. This was quite difficult being that I had started in August and had to have all this done by December, with school involved. This was quite hard but I made it work and had a moving robot by May.