RICK AELMANS

RoboCup Junior Istanbul 2011

During my high school period I started with a group of classmates and one of our teachers a LEGO robotics soccer and rescue team. Within the team my responsibility was to design and build the robots using mainly LEGO NXT parts. During the building and design process I build over forty robots as prototypes and for testing. With the final design we participated the annual national RoboCup junior series held at the experience center NEMO in Amsterdam were we became national champions in robot soccer. Our victory led to an invitation to the world championship RoboCup Junior that would be held in Istanbul. For more than a year we raced to build a better, faster, lighter and stronger robot to be able to compete with teams from other countries. Unfortunately we were unequipped  due to the technologies used by most of our competitors. We were up against teams using self - build motors and carbon - fiber parts. But beside the technological difference we as a team had the time of our lives with this amazing experience were we learned so much about future robotics. Experiences like Designing, Building and Programming which we could put to good use in our future.