Football is so popular in China. Almost everyone is interested in this sport—the young and the old, boys and girls, and now even robots.
Recently at Hangzhou Guangming Middle School, kids from several schools played football with their robots.
Robot football is very different from human football. Only two robots play in each match. The field is as big as a ping pong table. One half is black and the other is white. Each robot tries to catch the "football" and score a goal. The robot with more goals wins.
Gao Linge, a boy from Hangzhou Guangming Middle School, helped make one of the robots for the match.
"My school bought the main board (主板),"said Gao, 14. "Then I decided what my robot looked like and made a computer program for it."
Gao's robot was eight centimeters tall and had two arms. It had four sensors (传感器) to "see" and "kick" the "football".
Ying Xuehai, a 12-year-old student from Gao's school, also made a robot. His robot played against Gao's. The match decided who would go to the final game. Ying lost the game. So he gave many of his robot's parts to Gao.
Even so, Gao's robot didn't win the final. It played well in the first five minutes. Then it slowed down. By the end of the match, it could hardly move. What was wrong? Gao and Ying found the problem—the robot ran out of batteries (电池)!
"We'll solve the problem and beat the other schools next time!" said the two boys.