The scene is not from The Matrix, but it was a dilemma that confronted George Sempelidis and his Team Pashmam partner Koosha Kayani in their hotel room the night before they were to represent Australia in the RoboCup22 competition in Bangkok earlier this month.
Their answer? Well, it was not a high-tech solution. Instead of panicking they went straight into problem-solving mode. Like MacGyver, they found a low-tech solution – a glue gun and the hotel cutlery – to restore their robot in time.
Their robot worked and the team won the award for Excellence in Engineering Process in the Under-19 RoboCupRescue category of the international competition which drew 400 teams from 45 countries.
Their Pashmam robot had to according to competition requirements identified “victims within re-created disaster scenarios, varying in complexity from line-following on a flat surface to negotiating paths through obstacles on uneven terrain.”
Unlike many of the other teams that took part and whose machines were assembled from pre-manufactured commercial kits, Sempelidis (as the engineer) and Kayani (the programmer) took the hard road to build their machine from scratch.
The materials cost $628 and the advantage was that they could put more sensors on to their machine to better navigate the competition course that included a ramp, identify obstacles to avoid or remove them on their way to carrying out their “rescue” of different coloured balls.
“We used 15 sensors and a camera whereas our competitors (using the pre-assembled kits) had just five sensors. Ours was more sensitive to the environment, reacted faster, was lighter, more manoeuvrable and more accurate,” said Koosha.
Both team members are recent migrants to Australia – they met in 2019 during an English language course at Glen Eira College. Koosha (aged 18) who came with his family from Yzad in central Iran had already been studying English for a month when he was introduced to George (17) who had recently arrived with his family from Komotini, Greece.
In Greece, George had become interested in robotics from young. At the First High School of Komotini he joined the robotics team which won an Erasmus Plus scholarship to Estonia.
“I told the teachers [Glen Eira] of my interests and they sat me next to Koosha as they had seen that we both had been making robots and had been entering competitions [before coming to Australia],” George told Neos Kosmos.
It was not long before the two young men joined forces and made their own robots. George specialised in engineering designing robots whose components were housed so they could allow them to carry out the required tasks efficiently.
As team programmer, Koosha used algorithms to enable an “autonomous robot to find repetitive patterns in the environment and to program the robot to respond to changes”.
Through its sensors and camera, the robot needs to accurately assess its environment, adapt to unexpected situations.
“As programmers, we break down the normal things that we see and put them into a mathematical expression that the robot computer can understand,” Koosha said.
“We decided (from the beginning to fully customise our robots. We bought our own tools and materials – worked on extra shifts to raise the money and spent time (unsuccesfully so far) looking for sponsors,” George said.
“We had to learn all this ourselves and there have been a lot of dramas and crises along the way,” George said.
The duo entered state competitions and progressed to the nationals where they were selected to be part of Team Australia at the RoboCup22 in Bangkok that was held 11-17 July.
“The Pashmam Robot performed as well as we expected, but we do have have plans to improve it further,” said Koosha. “Winning an award in the competition was great but it was an outstanding experience meeting teams from around the world. It was an amazing educational experience.”
Their plan is to take a better, improved Pashmam robot to the next RoboCup which will be held in Bordeaux, France, next year.
After that, the partners hope to study mechanical engineering at Monash University and open a business manufacturing custom-made robots.
And one lesson they have learned from their Bangkok experience that they will carry with them for the rest of their lives: check your robot thoroughly before you turn on that switch.
Visit the Team Pashmam website on www.teampashmam.com