Participation in LYRC 2025
In less than 2 months, 5 members of the association’s digital workshop will be taking part in the LYRC (Luxembourg Youth Robotics Challenge) in the CTF (Capture The Flag) category. The robotics competition will take place on February 8, 2025 at the Lycée Alin Mayrisch in Luxembourg. It will bring together around ten teams, most of them from Luxembourg, but also from France and the UK, for example. For our middle-school students, this is the first robotics competition they’ll be taking part in, but there’s nothing to intimidate them !
Our future competitors are divided into a team of three (the ninth-graders : Léna, Nathanaël and Alexandre) and a team of two (the eighth-graders : Vivian and Jade).
The competition focuses almost exclusively on robot programming, since during the matches, the robot moves and performs actions completely autonomously, without human intervention. The robots used by our teams during the competition are Mbots, programmed using their special programming software, Mblock.
As far as the rules of the challenge are concerned, matches will take place on a 3 x 4-meter pitch. It will be divided into 3 parts: The neutral zone (in yellow opposite), the zone with obstacles (in white) and the opposing zone (in pink). During matches, only one team competes against another. At the start, each team’s robot is located in a colored zone (yellow or pink); in addition, as shown in the diagram, a flag is located in each colored zone. The aim of the game is for each robot to cross the obstacle zone and the opponent’s zone in order to retrieve the opponent’s flag, all in under 2 minutes 30.
However, the configuration of the playing field changes after each match: the layout of the obstacles is modified and this new layout is revealed to the participants 10 minutes before the start of the match, so that they can modify the robot’s program to take account of the new obstacle locations. What’s at stake is the quality of programming and speed, not to mention fair play, which is an essential value of the challenge: for example, 5 points will be awarded to teams whose robots do not collide.
Des compétences concernant la modélisation 3D sont également mobilisées par nos futurs compétiteurs, notamment pour imprimer des pièces supplémentaires qui pourront être placées sur les robots, à condition que leurs dimensions maximales (20cm x 20cm x 20cm) soient respectées. Ces pièces ajoutées viseront notamment à protéger les roues de MBot, dans le cas où des obstacles viendraient se coincer dedans.
The future competitors have been hard at work for the past 3 weeks programming and training their robots. A great way to put into practice the programming skills learned and developed by these youngsters during the digital workshop !
We wish Léna, Jade, Alexandre, Vivian and Nathanaël a lot of fun in their first competition ! We wish them luck and success !