Several New Jersey youth will represent the United States at the RobocupJunior International Tournament being held in Leipzig, Germany.
Several New Jersey youth will represent the United States at the RobocupJunior International Tournament being held at the end of June in Leipzig, Germany.
The teams will have the opportunity to meet hundreds of research scientists and engineers from around the world and watch their robots in action, according to a news release.
"The dynamic of the RCJ challenge is not for fainthearted," said Elizabeth Mabrey, director of the Branchburg-based Storming Robots. "These impressive youngsters must think independently and create effective solutions by themselves with no mentor's assistance throughout the six hours' competition."
Storming Robots provides the youth with robotics, computer science and engineering education. There were over 35 teams competing at the 2016 USA RobocupJunior tournament, with students from New Jersey taking the most first places in several Leagues.
The teams include:
- Team AvengerZ won the First Place in the Rescue Line Primary Division. The team includes Ethan Mak, 14, from Short Hills, and Shikhar Ahuja, 12, of Belle Mead.
- Team Deus Ex Machina won the First Place in the Rescue Line Secondary Division. The team includes Aaron Fan, 15, of Belle Mead; Daniel Tang, 15, of Belle Mead; Kyle Li, 15, of Belle Mead; Mehal Kashyap, 15, of Piscataway; and Shaurya Gunderia, 13, of Monmouth.
- Team MazeRunners won the First Place in the Rescue Maze Open League, which is designed for High School level students. The team includes Jeffrey Cheng, 13, of Bridgewater; Julian Lee, 13, of Summit; and Stepan Gorelenkov, 14, of Belle Mead.
Several other teams also received various Distinguished Awards:
- The Best Algorithms Award was given to the team RoboNavigators, whose members include Rishi Purohit, 11, of Branchburg; Daniel Xue, 13, of Belle Mead; and Andrew Krapivin, 14, of Belle Mead. They created a search algorithm usually only introduced at the college level and were able to explain it during a presentation.
- The Best Electronic/Mechanical Design Award went to the team Beings, which consists of Ethan Wu, 14, of Bridgewater, and Alex Zhang, 14, of Belle Mead. This team used a printed circuit board of their own design. They designed all of their major mechanical components and 3D printed them.
- The Best Speaker Award went to the team OmegaBotZ, which consists of Jalen Patel, Justin Patel and Deep Patel, all 13, from Allentown, Pa. During the technical interview, they were able to describe their work eloquently, as well as present clear and concise documentation, speaking with confidence and charisma.
- The Best Impact Award went to the team Dimensions, which includes Luke Dai, 16, of Belle Mead; Sonia Purohit, 14, of Piscataway; and Darshan Patel, 14, also of Piscataway. The "Best Impact" Award is for a team's positive impact on their engineering community because of their attempt in the work of neural networking algorithm application. Despite of its final deployment did not achieve high points as expected, their effort was recognized and they were encouraged to continue.
- The Best Teamwork Award went to Team AvengerZ.