RoboCup soccer competition: Vancouver high school students earn 2nd place

A team of Vancouver high school students came in second place at an international robotic soccer competition held in Brazil last week.

Allen Chak, Bryan Ge, Felix Huang, Jeff Ma and Robert Mo built soccer-playing robots that competed in the 2014 RoboCup competition.

Chak, 16, said getting second place was a great surprise and says he is thinking of programming robots when he grows up.

Team SagerSoccer competed in the category of two-on-two robot teams built by people aged 14 to 19 that must use artificial intelligence to operate.

SagerSoccer's robots are about the size of two phone books stacked together and raced around on wheels to maneuver the ball.

Once the robots had the net in sight, they would use compressed air to extend a small pipe that kicked the ball into the net.

Chak said he would love to enter the competition again.

The competition's organizers say their goal is to field a team that can beat the human FIFA World Cup winners in 2050.