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Just back from the trip to Ukraine, the robots had another important job to do. In the brand new entrance of Gemini, a film set was build around a tall Christmas tree.
Notable at the set was the humanoid TUlip, the walking robot from the Eindhoven University of Technology. Originally, the developers of this robot had their own team, but this group merged with Tech United. And what is nicer as a first team activity than making a video with a Christmas greeting? TUlip and fans: welcome to the team!
A Christmas greeting ofcourse isn't complete without a Christmas card. (photo by Bart van Overbeeke)! Download the card here in high resolution, nice as a wallpaper!
TU/e starts open source system for faster development of better, lower-cost robots
Many universities around the world are working on the development of robots. In most cases independently, which means development takes longer, robots remain costly and products from different groups are incompatible. That’s why Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e) is today starting the Robotic Open Platform (ROP), an open source system for robot hardware. The aim is for this to become a large plug and play library to which robot builders worldwide can add their designs or improve existing ones. The higher goal is to accelerate the development of applications such as care robots, and to make them much cheaper than they are at present. TU/e itself is making available the complete blueprints of its AMIGO care robot and the well known TU/e soccer robots.
The heart of the Robotic Open Platform is a Wiki, in which all participants can make their designs available for others to copy or improve. The aim is for all elements in the Wiki to fit together seamlessly, both literally and figuratively, for example by standardization.
Much lower cost
Working together in this way will make development possible much faster and at much lower cost. “We’re putting all the drawings, diagrams and descriptions online that are needed to build a replica of our AMIGO robot”, says dr.ir. René van de Molengraft, one of the robot researchers at TU/e. “The idea is that this information will allow other research groups to build the robot at a relatively low cost. If you want to buy a robot like this, it costs around three or four hundred thousand euro. Our aim is that within a few years you’ll be able to build the successor to our AMIGO for 10,000 euro. By putting everything in the public domain you can get many more interested parties involved in the development, which means progress will be made much faster.”
All the information about AMIGO is available online from today at www.roboticopenplatform.org. Early next year all the technical documentation will be added for the soccer robots of TU/e’s Tech United team, which has played in the final of the RoboCup soccer World Championship in each of the past four years.
Example
The Robotic Open Platform will be the hardware counterpart of the existing ROS (Robot Operating System) open source system for robot software. This was started in 2007 in the USA, and many robot developers have joined in the initiative. For example the software of AMIGO is also based on the principles developed in ROS.
European robotics week
The launch of ROP is taking place during the European Robotics Week, from 28 November to 4 December. The week features more than 340 robotics-related activities, organized by 127 institutes, to focus attention on the growing importance of robots for society (www.robotics-week.eu).
Results of RoboCup Istanbul 2011 here!
Final match vs. team Water: part 1 | part 2 | part 3 | part 4
Again we’re one goal short of winning a world title in soccer robotics. After beating RFC Stuttgart in the semi-finals, we met team Water in the final match. Many team members feared this team from China because of our earlier confrontation in Singapore.
Team Water is known for its perfectly placed lob balls and fast turns. These skills were one of the reasons we decided to completely redesign our goalkeeper earlier this year. One hour before the final match of RoboCup Istanbul, this goalkeeper broke down. Taking its warming up a little too serious, parts of its electronics were melted…
As usual, we decided to change our software right before the match. Eventually version 4011 was uploaded to the robots. Our team was getting nervous. Could this go wrong again? Would we end up with second place for four times in a row?
Indeed we could. Directly after kickoff team Water made some impressive goals, lifting the score to 3 to 0. It was really frustrating to see the goalkeeper recognizing the balls properly but not being able to move its rack upward. During the second half we were able to finally catch up after one of the Water robots turned out to be malfunctioning.
Our team members working on the AMIGO robot were just as nervous. For them this was the first appearance in a major RoboCup tournament. It’s characteristic for the Tech United team spirit that these new team members were accepted by the group this fast. After half a year of development, we are already better than some of the more experienced teams in the @Home competition.
And of course Tech United is much bigger than only the people who were standing courtside in Istanbul. We would like to thank all previous team members, our fans, sponsors and of course Eindhoven University of Technology as a whole!
