Team Dalmatians from Rogers-Herr Middle School in Durham competes in the dance competition

Teams from Mercersburg Academy compete in the soccer competition

In the darkened auditorium, students flank a 4’ by 6’ soccer field, their eyes fixed on a blinking electronic ball. Four robots buzz around the field, knocking the ball back and forth. One team groans as their robot pops a wheelie and begins to spin in circles, losing the ball. Two other robots trap it in a corner, jostling for position. Suddenly, they break free, and in a flash, the ball is pushed toward the goal line. Score! The teams burst out shouting and clapping, then shake hands. A new RoboCup Junior soccer champion has been crowned.

RoboCup Junior is an annual hands-on robotics tournament designed to foster interest and education in science, mathematics, and computing, hosted at Duke by Professor Jeff Forbes and a class of undergraduate Duke student mentors. Prior to the competition, Duke undergraduates in Forbes’s “Teaching with Robotics” class visit local Durham schools once a week to prepare students for the competition and teach related math and science concepts. The program, for which students receive a Lego Mindstorm NXT kit to build their robots, is supported by a grant from the Burroughs Wellcome Fund Student Science Enrichment Program.

The regional competition was held on a sunny Saturday in March. Early in the morning, middle and high school students descended on the LSRC to compete in soccer, search and rescue, and dance contests. “We had a very good group of teams this year,” says Forbes, including teams from Pennsylvania and Minnesota. Team Dalmatians, a team of three girls from Rogers-Herr Middle School in Durham, took first prize in the dance competition with a robot dancing to “Who Let the Dogs Out” and their own choreographed back-up dance. “They really got into it,” says Letty Lawrence, a Duke sophomore and the team’s mentor.

The RoboCup Junior World Finals will be held in Singapore this June, and Forbes is hoping to secure funding to send the winning rescue and dance teams to the competition.