Rugby players meet their match in mini-robots

There might be something robotic about the consistently high performance level of Munster rugby captain Paul O’Connell but he could meet his match in a group of UCD students.

They have programmed mini-robots to play rugby in a manner that represents a cross between Robot Wars and Subbuteo as part of their first-year engineering course at UCD.

A group of 62 students, in 21 teams, yesterday battled it out for the top prize in the ninth annual Siemens RoboRugby Competition.