Thames & Kosmos DLX, Experiment Manual, Page: 108 / 132

The great soccer match
YOU WILL NEED
› The assembled soccer game
› IR remote control
› 5 AA batteries or 5 AA rechargeable batteries
› Ping-pong ball (table tennis ball) and felt-tip pen
› Masking tape
› Measuring tape and coin
HERE’S HOW
1. Take a new table tennis ball and color one half with a
felt-tip pen.
2. Decide where on the floor you want your soccer field to
be. It should be an area about one meter by one meter.
Mark the boundaries with masking tape. Place the goal
on one of the boundary lines.
3. Decide on the location of the kickoff point. It could be
at the edge opposite the goal, for example.
4. Now, you and your opponent should flip a coin to
decide who starts. The winner of the coin toss should
also pick a color — white or the color you drew on one
half of the table tennis ball.
5. Time to start. Kickoff! Each player gets to use the robot
to kick the ball when that player’s color is on the top.
Whoever is the first to get three goals is the winner.
WHAT’S HAPPENING
This experiment is all about having fun playing. So
let’s cut right to the chase and sum up the most
important rules:
››› If the ball lands in the goal, the shooter gets a
point and the other player gets to kick off.
››› If the ball doesn’t land in the goal after a
shot, the player whose color has the “upper
hand” gets to continue.
››› If one player shoots the ball into the out-
of-bounds area, the other player
gets a “throw-in” at the spot
where the ball left the field.
››› If a player touches the
ball with a robot — even
just by mistake! — the
ball counts as having
been played.
DID YOU KNOW?
In the RoboCup Junior
league, the
soccer league
is arguably the most
exciting of the three
challenges. One of the
soccer league’s classes
used to have contests in
which two autonomous
robots competed against each
other. In the other class, each team is
composed of two robots with a maximum
height of 22 centimeters. The teams play
with a ball about the size of a ping-pong
ball. The ball emits infrared light, which
lets the robots track it.
EXPERIMENT 18
106