Centre Of Robotics Excellence

CORE FRIED SENSOR achieved the only 0 intervention run at RoboCup Asia Pacific Tianjin Invitational this year.

While the team won the RoboCup Junior Rescue Line U19 category at RoboCup Singapore Open, they were too young to represent Singapore at RoboCup Internationals at Incheon (all under 14).

With 2 of the team members already representing Singapore at the WRO International Finals in Izmir, Turkey, and RCAP Finals in Qingdao, China in 2024, the initial sentiment was to give RCAP TJI a miss.

However, the newest member on the team decided to take this opportunity even if it meant going alone.

In the 1 short month between SG Open and RCAP TJI, the team worked on an improved obstacle management strategy and integrated an IMU to replace yaw estimation previously done with odometry from the EVN library.

Over the event the team communicated over video call, successfully debugging some tuning issues.

Their efforts were rewarded when the robot managed to complete an entire run from start to finish without a single Lack Of Progress call.

Unfortunately, one major issue that cropped up was the field of view of their line following sensors, which were thrown off by the sunlight glancing off the tiles as the sun rose and set.

Victim detection was also not tuned in time, resulting in the robot not having any success on the competition field even though the team did manage some full score attempts on the practice field.

Nonetheless, there were certainly positives to be taken away and it is nice to see that the solution that CORE FRIED SENSOR has developed seems robust enough to maintain a decent level of performance even with the main programmer off-site alongside challenging conditions.

Back home, the team was experimenting with vision-based approaches on their own and are ready to do more once they meet again.

Looking forward to what this young team will be able to achieve in the years to come!

CORE FRIED SENSOR
RCAP TJI 2026
RCJ RESCUE LINE U19 1ST

[wheely troublesome]

CORE MIKE came into RCAP TJI with their best robot yet.

After solving some sensor geometry issues on their rebuilt robot midway through the SG Open event, oscillations on their line following were much reduced.

Coupled with some improvements to their evacuation zone strategy, the team was much more confident in their evacuation zone performance.

Unfortunately RCAP TJI threw up a whole new set of issues.

Most notably, the foam used for the tiles were constantly shedding, leaving a powdery layer on their new silicone tyres which struggled for grip.

The team cycled through different tyre permutations but could not find something that worked well.

Lighting at the venue was also unkind, with sunlight glancing over the tiles earlier in the day.

The TCS34725 sensors, with its almost 180° effective field of view, threw up vastly different readings depending on the orientation of the robot, making even basic line following a nightmare and line gaps next to impossible.

While they struggled through the line segment, CORE MIKE has finally performed a successful rescue in competition after coming really close at the RoboCup Singapore Open.

Finding and picking up 2 live victims, they held their breaths as the robot looked well on track to deposit them.

Unfortunately, fate had other plans as one victim landed perfectly on the edge of the evacuation point where it stayed for the rest of the run.

While not the performance CORE MIKE was looking for, there have been some positives to take away and the actualization of real problems that the team will need to consider and solve for going forward.

Back for a week, the team has already picked my brains on what went wrong and started redesigning various bits of the robot.

Looking forward to the next iteration of their robot with most of the team sitting out WRO this year!

CORE MIKE
RoboCup Asia Pacific Tianjin Invitational
RoboCup Junior Rescue Line U19
2nd

ft. 400m NSG gold medalist trying to outrun my camera

I get 50h to work with each year. There are 52 weeks (40 school weeks) in a year.

A lot of these kids, including helloworld, are scholars. This means I start working with them some time when they're in secondary 3, and have just a smidge over a year with them.

Because robotics (under the science team) is a second CCA, their main CCAs and other activities get priority and having 100% attendance is a rarity.

The club is also severely under-resourced. Last year, this team had a sensor fail on them during a run at the RoboCup Singapore Open. This was in spite of our best efforts to use the most functional EV3s, cables, sensors, and micro SD Cards. Batteries are held in with tape and at some point, the club was surviving on one shared charger.

Competition is the first time these kids see a rescue field. Testing usually happens on a single creased mat from an online event held during COVID, or some lines made with black tape. No speed bumps, ramps, see saws, etc.

Outside the bare essentials (we bought new chargers this year 🤯), I've fought for what'll truly help the kids grow.

Over the last few years, I've bugged the school for 3D printers. Last year, the outgoing CCA teacher in charge managed to wrangle some funds from another department to make that a reality. No more waiting for a week to test prints on my personal printer.

The day the printer arrived was an occasion. The whole club came together to get it set up, tested, and calibrated. We'd spend the following sessions learning 3D design with . All this time, we were acutely aware that time was ticking down towards RoboCup 2026 and robots needed to be built.

helloworld's championship at the RoboCup Tianjin Invitational RCAP Rescue Line U19 category is what these committed kids have managed to achieve in about a year. 50 hours of CCA time to learn EV3 MicroPython, 3D design, and to design a robot for Rescue Line.

Pretty decent for the circumstances

This trip would also not have been possible without the support of the parents who paid in full and took time off to chaperone the team in Tianjin as the school was unable to send teachers, so thank you!

CORE HEART BUTTIES is a team of 2 secondary 1 girls (13yo)

They took part in the RCJ Rescue Line U19 Entry category in Singapore, coming in 4th

Disappointed by the result, they decided to give RoboCup Asia Pacific Tianjin Invitational a shot even though they would have to re-design their robot and code in a short 1+ months to move up to the RCAP category (intermediate in SG)

Seeing that they were crestfallen and given the short timeframe, I asked them if they would like to simply use their old EV3 robot (RoboCup SG Open U12 3rd place, RCAP Finals Qingdao U12 3rd, Best Learning Journal) and rework the code for an easier path to a result

They refused, wanting instead to prioritize learning

They chose to gut their EV3 robot, switching out the EV3 for an EVN and rebuilt some bits including 3D modelling some custom parts with for their sensors and gear train

Working overtime on the robot on their own over the few weekends we had, the kids have put in an admirable performance, coming in 2nd

More importantly, I'm glad that they chose not to take the easier way out

---

There is a Pareto front of winning and learning

Maximizing learning necessarily trades off against winning

However, the closer one moves to learning, the quicker one's Pareto front expands

I believe that the role of the coach is to:
1. Nudge students towards that Pareto front
2. Help students (and their parents) understand this joint optimization problem and be part of the decision making process

It is also certainly not to get kids to rote learn one particular solution (they have enough of that at school) which contributes next to nothing to their development as problem solvers

I'm really happy to have a group of enlightened families here at CORE that understand and believe in what I do

It's hard, lonely work standing up against the industry when winning, as the most visible signal, is used as a proxy variable for learning but it's all worth it seeing these kids grow up