Handle the machine
Students drive a real humanoid unit before they touch a line of code. The point is intuition: how it balances, how it turns, where its limits are.
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Upper primary · middle school · high school
A robotics course that ends in a match, not a report.
Students learn to command a real humanoid robot, write football strategy in simulation, and then play a 3v3 game where the robots decide for themselves. One academic year, 22 lessons, 12 capability modules.
No prior programming experience is assumed. The first lesson involves a controller, not a keyboard.
Design intent
Real hardware first, simulation second, competition last.
Robotics education has a habit of turning into a demonstration: the teacher moves the robot, the class watches. This course is built the other way round. Every lesson has hands-on time, and the year finishes with something the students cannot fake — a match.
Iterate without cost
In the simulation environment a parameter change costs nothing and shows up immediately. Lowering the cost of being wrong is what makes students willing to experiment.
Play, then explain
The final session is a 3v3 game plus a strategy presentation. Every student plays and every student presents. A match is an honest assessment.
Curriculum
Twelve modules, twenty-two lessons.
The first semester builds a foundation: see the robot, command it, programme it, then beat someone with it. The second semester is not more of the same — it moves from "can play" to "plays smart" and "plays as a team".
Semester one · lessons 1–11
| Module | Lessons | Focus | What students do |
|---|---|---|---|
| 01 | 1–2 | Understanding embodied intelligence | How a robot sees, hears and stays upright; the perceive–decide–act loop |
| 02 | 3–4 | Commanding a real robot | Controller, app and key commands; open-loop versus closed-loop control |
| 03 | 5–6 | Simulation programming basics | First motion command and first agent written in the simulation environment |
| 04 | 7–8 | Football strategy design | Chasing, dribbling, passing, role assignment — the thinking-heavy block |
| 05 | 9–10 | 3v3 rules and play | Autonomous play after kick-off: no remote control once the whistle goes |
| 06 | 11 | Teamwork and technical presentation | Team roles, tactics board, post-match review, explaining the result |
Semester two · lessons 12–22
| Module | Lessons | Focus | What students do |
|---|---|---|---|
| 07 | 12–14 | Perception and decision making | Vision recognition and target localisation; moving from "run at the ball" to "run at the position" |
| 08 | 15–17 | Multi-robot coordination | Role allocation, passing timing, formation keeping, avoiding three robots chasing one ball |
| 09 | 18–19 | Strategy as data | Possession time, shots, turnover positions — arguing from numbers instead of instinct |
| 10 | 20 | Engineering practice and version control | Versioned strategy, change logs, rolling back a change that broke the team |
| 11 | 21 | Reading competition rules | Differences in rule set, field size and entry process between school, district and city events |
| 12 | 22 | Team selection and project defence | Selection match plus a public defence: what each student did, and why |
Learning path
Four stages across the year, each with something to show.
A single semester covers stages one and two. The full year reaches stages three and four, which is the reason we advise against restarting the beginner course every term: students stay at "meet the robot" and never get to lead a team.
Stage 01 · lessons 1–4
Meet it
Robot introduction, perception, safety rules, first commands. Curiosity and caution before operation.
Stage 02 · lessons 5–11
Teach it to play
Simulation, first agent, chasing and passing. The semester closes with a first 3v3 match.
Stage 03 · lessons 12–17
Make it smarter
Vision, multi-robot coordination, tuning by data. From "can play" to "reads the game".
Stage 04 · lessons 18–22
Take it outside
Version control, rule reading, team selection, and the step to district and city events.
Scheduling
If the calendar is tight, we cut teaching, not doing.
Modules are fixed; scheduling is not. Take whatever the timetable allows out of the 22 lessons. The trimming rule is written down and it does not change: cut explanation and demonstration first, keep the robot, the code and the match.
| Format | Lessons | Shape | Output |
|---|---|---|---|
| Academic year | 22 | 11 per semester, one lesson per week | Two in-school matches, team selection, district recommendation |
| Single semester | 11 | One lesson per week for a semester | One in-school 3v3 match and an individual capability report |
| Holiday camp | 8–16 | Four consecutive days, or eight in summer | Camp closing match and a team video |
| Weekend crash course | 4 | Two days or four half-days | Driving, first strategy, one mini-match |
| Science-festival day | 1 | 90-minute session, rotating groups | On-site participation certificate and a follow-up pathway |
Standard trimmed versions are 8, 11, 16 and 22 lessons. Schools on a weekly 40-minute period can split the year into two sets of 16 short sessions instead.
What is handed over
Four things, delivered together.
01
Curriculum
12 modules across five scheduling formats, with lesson plans, task cards and classroom organisation notes.
02
Hardware and simulation
Real units and a simulation environment configured to the institution's own conditions, so a single-day event can run without a dedicated lab.
03
Teacher training
Three days, aimed at getting in-school science and IT teachers to the point where they can run the course without us in the room.
04
Competition and event planning
In-school showcase, district league and city-level demonstration, linked as three tiers rather than three unrelated events.
Competition support
What we do at an event — and what we do not.
Competitions are the part of this field where suppliers overstate their role, so we state ours narrowly. Our contribution is technical service and event operations support: the rule set, the platform, the referee training, the team preparation. That is the whole of it.
| Area | Delivered by us |
|---|---|
| Rules and format | Localisation of the rights holder's rule set: division setup, field dimensions, penalty detail, schedule and progression |
| Competition platform | Simulation environment (remote-capable, replayable) plus real units; scoring system, timing and streaming |
| Officiating and operations | Referee training and certification, operations manual, volunteer roles, on-site crew and contingency plan |
| Team preparation | Pre-event training, tactical review, entry documentation, defence and presentation coaching |
Boundary statement
Event ownership, event names and awards belong to the respective rights holders. We take part as a technical service and event operations provider. We do not claim to be an event owner, and we make no claim of endorsement by any competition body. Entry eligibility, schedules and rule sets follow the rights holder's official documents for the current season. Where joint branding or a joint announcement is wanted, the decision rests with the rights holder under its own process.
Four tiers of event, by scale
L1 · International
World-level competition
Annual, entry through national qualification or accreditation. Preparation typically runs a semester or longer. We support pre-event training, rule and simulation adaptation, travelling technical cover and post-event review.
L2 · National
Qualification rounds and finals
Scheduled across an academic year, usually split into provincial rounds and a national final. We support project scoping, hardware and simulation provision, pitch coaching, and the run from provincial round to final.
L3 · Provincial, city, district
Regional competition
The tier with the shortest cycle and the widest reach, and usually where a school first gets a visible result. We localise the format, deploy the platform, train officials and run the day.
L4 · League and showcase
Inter-school and exhibition
Outside the official calendar but the easiest place to start: leagues, invitationals, science-festival showcases and demonstration matches. We build the schedule, set up the field and run the sessions.
A note on sequencing, because it is the part that most regional programmes get wrong: the constraint is rarely the curriculum, it is the teacher. Equipment arrives, the timetable is set, and nobody is ready to teach the second semester. Train teachers before running the league — people first, then competition.
Who it suits
Four kinds of institution.
Schools
Single-semester or full-year courses as an ECA, club or school-based curriculum, taught by your own staff after the three-day handover.
Science museums and youth centres
Standing courses and holiday camps on a weekend cycle, run alongside exhibition floors rather than in a dedicated lab.
District education bureaus and science associations
Teacher training, district leagues and science-month programmes, sequenced from one demonstration school outward.
Vocational and higher education
The L1–L4 ladder extends upward into ROS 2 and SLAM for institutions that want to go past the school-level modules.
Questions
What schools ask before committing.
Does the course require prior programming experience?
No. It assumes none. Students begin by driving a real robot with a controller, move to block-based work in simulation, and only then to code. The curve is deliberately gradual, and the first two lessons exist to build it.
One semester or a full year?
It depends whether you want exposure or a result. Eleven lessons complete one full cycle and are enough for a first in-school match; twenty-two reach vision, multi-robot coordination and team selection, which is the point at which district and city events become realistic. Our usual advice is to run one semester first, then decide on the second based on student retention and teacher appetite.
Can the lesson count be fitted to our calendar?
Yes. 8, 11, 16 and 22 are the standard versions; anything else is built by adding or removing modules. Trimming follows a fixed priority: explanation and demonstration go first, the robot, the code and the match stay.
How short can a camp or crash course be?
Four lessons for a weekend crash course, eight for a winter camp, sixteen for a summer camp. What compresses is the systematic coverage, not the hands-on time — four lessons still include driving a real unit, writing a first strategy and playing a mini-match.
What is your role at competitions?
Technical service and event operations support. Event ownership, event names and awards belong to the respective rights holders. We prepare rule sets, deploy the competition platform, train referees and support teams. We do not claim to own an event, and we make no claim of endorsement by any competition body.
What does the school need to provide?
A room, a timetable slot and the participating teachers. Hardware and simulation environment are part of the package and can be configured to whatever the institution already has. Send the room dimensions and the class size and we will confirm the configuration before quoting.
Tell us the year group, the class size and the timetable.
We reply within 2 business days, GMT+8, with a course plan covering lesson arrangement, hardware configuration and the teacher-training schedule. If you only want to run one event rather than a course, that can be quoted separately.