Indian-American school team captures first-place at RoboCup World Championship

SAN FRANCISCO (Diya TV) — A team of four Indian-American schoolchildren from New Jersey’s Cedar Hill Prep School captured first-place honors in the 20th annual RoboCup world championships in Leipzig, Germany this week.

The annual four-day tournament showcases high-performance robots, with a total of 3,500 participants from 45 countries.

Cedar Hill’s team represented the U.S. and previously won the U.S. championship, coached by Neetika Bhalla. The students, Arjun Agrawal, Aarav Gupta, Nitasha Gupta and Nivritti Mantha, competed in the OnStage category, which involved programming the robots to dance to music.

RoboCupJunior OnStage required teams to create a robotic performance on a stage. Teams were allowed to use a wide-range of technologies to create the performance. Jury members evaluated the teams on the complexity of the robots, their programming, and the technical implementation of the performance.

There were two competitions at this level – Primary Individual and Primary Super Team.

In the Primary Super Team category, Cedar Hill was teamed with members from other countries such as Mexico and Taiwan. Students were given 24 hours to collaborate and program their robots to a specific task without assistance from their coaches and mentors. The comprised team of students named themselves, “Olympic Bots,” and defeated five other teams on their way to the first-place prize.