RoboCupJunior has long proven it can pull students into robotics — but two barriers keep the movement from reaching further. There is a gap between the Junior leagues and the Major leagues that university research builds on, and the physical robots Junior competitions require are expensive enough to keep many teams out entirely. This proposal, accepted for RoboCup Federation league-development support in 2018, set out to close both gaps at once.
The plan was an open-source Rescue Simulation sub-league for RoboCupJunior — a software-only entry point with no hardware to buy. Built alongside the Major Rescue Simulation league so the two platforms would interface cleanly, it gave Junior teams a genuine pathway toward Major-league research while removing the cost barrier that shuts so many schools out.
Simulation trades hands-on wiring for something Junior teams rarely get to touch: algorithm and software development against a real physics engine. It also unlocks vision systems, LiDAR, depth perception, and image classification — topics that are impractical on a physical Junior robot but become accessible the moment the robot is virtual. And it is cheap, space-efficient, and light on the prior knowledge instructors need — exactly what a school-based challenge wants.
The proposal laid out six work packages — from defining the simulation scenario and building the open-source platform to authoring tutorials, standing up a support forum, recruiting trial teams, and running a demonstration league at RoboCup 2018 — on a $6,000 budget. The simulation was designed to scale in difficulty, so a first-year team could build a simple search strategy while an advanced team pushed research-grade solutions on the same platform.