Adafruit products used at Robocup Junior competition in The Netherlands

Two teams of successful high school students with Storming Robots Technology Learning Lab in the US recently won world titles from this year’s international RoboCup Junior (RCJ) competition.

Held at the Eindhoven University of Technology in the Netherlands July 17-20, the annual competition saw 2,000 participants in 300 teams from 35 countries come together and enter a world of AI, where robots are no longer a futuristic fantasy but a living reality.

RCJ stands out among pre-college robotics competitions, said Elizabeth Mabrey, founder and principal of Storming Robots. Held in conjunction with RoboCup, the RCJ event allows students to meet researchers and draw inspiration from the world’s top robotics professionals’ exhibitions and contest entries.

“These young minds have demonstrated exceptional problem-solving capabilities and technical skills, which are well beyond their years,” said Mabrey. “The RCJ experience has not only honed their technical and collaborative skills but has also inspired them towards future careers in engineering and technology.”

At RCJ, Team New AJE consisted of 10th-graders Etaash Mathamsetty Venkata Jain, Jiachen Jiang and Andrew Dai. The three clinched first place in the software algorithms-intensive Robotics Rescue Simulation League. This league tests competitors’ abilities in algorithmic development and virtual navigation.

An all-girls team − Team JAM Sessions − of 10th-grader Aditi Gopalakrishnan and 9th-graders Julia Chan and Maya Baireddy earned second place in the OnStage (STEAM initiative) Robotics League. Their project merged technology with the arts by developing a system that interprets American Sign Language (ASL) into music played on a piano through machine learning and robotic mechanisms.

Check out the video below and more on Microsoft Start. Well done!