RoboCup Junior · 2022–2025

Advanced Robotics Club

Three Crestwood students built autonomous soccer robots, won nationally and represented Canada at RoboCup in France and Brazil.

Outcome

After winning nationals in 2023, I founded Crestwood's first Advanced Robotics Club. Its first meeting filled two classrooms, and we returned to international competition in 2025.

Role: Robot designer, builder and club founder
Year: 2022–2025
Team: Daniel Markusson, Hayden Patience, Luke Hartford
Tools: Autonomous robotics, Electronics, Rapid prototyping

1st place

at Toronto's RoboCup competition

2×

represented Canada internationally

2 classrooms

filled at the first Advanced Robotics Club meeting

The classroom that got me into robotics

On my first visit to the high school I would later attend, Mr. Wan's engineering room immediately caught my attention: wires, circuits and metal parts covered the space. Its capstone project was RoboCup, where teams build one attacking and one defending robot to play autonomous soccer.

Mr. Wan invited me into the Grade 11 engineering class while I was in Grade 10. The workshop became a creative studio where I learned by building increasingly capable robots with my peers.

From Toronto to Bordeaux

Crestwood had never won the competition and had fewer resources than many established teams, but our work earned first place in Toronto and the chance to represent Canada at the 2023 RoboCup Junior International finals in Bordeaux, France.

Our quickly built robots stood beside designs that other teams had refined for years. When our gyroscope failed, the Croatian team immediately lent us a spare. That was my first glimpse of how generous the RoboCup community could be.

Building a robotics community at Crestwood

Back at school, I founded Crestwood's first Advanced Robotics Club. I promoted it on the daily announcements for a week, and the first meeting filled two classrooms. Our principal became the first sponsor, promising to match every dollar we raised from other organizations.

We formed a media team, attracted external sponsors and gave more students a place to build robots and compete. The club became one of Crestwood's most popular organizations.

RoboCup convinced me to keep pursuing computer science. Founding the club taught me how to recruit, mentor and keep a team moving.

Starting again for 2025

In Grade 12, we scrapped the previous design and rebuilt the robot from the ground up. After university admissions, we could dedicate more time to it, and the decision paid off with a dominant national performance and another invitation to represent Canada. At nationals, we named the robots after our lunches: Crispy Chicken and Montreal Smoked Meat.

The international event took us to Brazil for a week. We performed far better than we had in France and met remarkable teams. Brazil was the highlight of my summer, and the rebuilt robot performed much better than our 2023 version.