RoboCup Junior Rescue Line: the complete beginner's guide

RoboCup Junior Rescue Line is one of the most popular educational robotics competitions in the world. The scenario: a simulated disaster area, and a fully autonomous robot that has to follow a line through the wreckage, overcome obstacles, and rescue victims. No remote control, once the run starts, the robot is on its own.

The course

The field is built from modular tiles with a black line on white background. Along the way the robot can encounter:

• Gaps: sections where the line disappears and the robot must keep its heading until it finds it again.
• Intersections and dead ends: marked with green squares that tell the robot which way to turn. No green marker means go straight.
• Obstacles: physical objects the robot must drive around, then re-find the line.
• Speed bumps and debris: small bars and scattered material that test the chassis.
• Ramps: the course can go up and down between levels.
• Seesaws: a tilting element that shifts under the robot's weight.

The evacuation zone

At the end of the line the robot enters the evacuation zone: an area with no line at all, containing balls that represent victims, silver balls are living victims, black balls are dead ones. The robot has to locate them, pick them up, and deposit them in the correct evacuation point. This is where most of the points are won or lost, and where the hardest engineering problems live: detecting a ball in an open arena, gripping it reliably, and knowing where you are without a line to follow.

Scoring in short

Points come from successfully passing course elements (gaps, obstacles, intersections), reaching checkpoints, and rescuing victims. Every time the robot loses the line and needs a human touch, it takes a "lack of progress" and restarts from the last checkpoint. Fewer touches, more points. The exact values change from season to season, so always read the current official rules on the RoboCupJunior website.

What a team actually needs

You don't need expensive hardware to start. A working Rescue Line robot needs four things: a drivetrain that goes straight, line sensors (reflectance arrays are the common choice), a controller running your logic, and a lot of testing time. Cameras and custom PCBs come later, once the basics are solid. The teams that do well are rarely the ones with the fanciest parts, they're the ones that tested the most.

We'll cover each subsystem in detail in the next guides in this series.