Penza, 28 March 2016. PenzaNews. A group of school students from Penza will take part in the 8th Russia-wide robotics festival “Robofest-2016” that will take place in Moscow on April 12-15.

Photo by Stanislav Peganov

They are the students of the lyceum No. 73, the gubernatorial lyceum for gifted children, and the youth innovation center “NanoElectroLab.”

The contestants will be competing in two nominations, “Freestyle” and “Hello, Robot! Arduino.”

The team of the lyceum No. 73 will compete in the two “Hello, Robot! Arduino” subcategories, “Short Track” and “Sorter,” the electronics teacher of the lyceum Stanislav Peganov told PenzaNews.

“In the ‘Short Track’ nomination, a robot must make a predefined number of laps around the course along the black line as fast as possible. To do that, the robot must use sensors to determine its location to keep on driving,” he said.

The final race will feature not one, but two robots on the track at the same time, he added.

“This is the second precondition: the track features a crossing where the two robots might collide, so the robot that was the last to approach the crossing must give the right of way – the robot must also detect any obstacles ahead of itself,” the teacher explained.

The team of Alexander Karpushov and Artem Kolodin aims for the top 10, Stanislav Peganov pointed out.

“We have been working with Arduino since September 2015 – not too much. Our main objective is to gain experience. This nomination will pit together robots from all over the country, including strong contestants from St. Petersburg, the Sverdlovsk region and more,” said the electronics teacher.

The “Sorter” nomination has a higher difficulty, Stanislav Peganov said.

“There are four cans: large white, large black, small black and small white. A robot must sort them into two warehouses – that is, determine the type of the can and drive it to the correct warehouse, all in under three minutes. There are a total of six cans on the testing range. Some of them need to be brought to the warehouse, and some must be left untouched by the robot,” he explained.

The hardest part in this nomination is the software, he stressed.

“While the first nomination places the emphasis on a robot’s construction – the motor speed, the wheels and the like, the software goes on the forefront in the second nomination. It must be fairly complex. Right now, we are at a stage when our program is 2,000 lines long,” explained the electronics teacher.

The Penza region will be represented in this nomination by Tatyana Kireeva and Egor Igonin, who also aim for the top 10, Stanislav Peganov announced.

In turn, Denis Timirbaev, head of “NanoElectroLab,” told PenzaNews that the team from the youth innovation center will compete in “Freestyle” nomination.

“They are Peter Bardin and his sister Yelizaveta, whom he is mentoring. They will be presenting two projects: one is a greenhouse, with fully developed electronics, developed software, a fairly interesting Arduino-baised project. And his sister will present a Lego-based project ‘Space Artist’,” he said, adding that Pavel Bardin’s greenhouse project had earned the first place at the 2016 MFTI international scientific and technical works conference “Start to Science.”