The football robots won the final against Water and thereby claimed the world title!! This thrilling final ended with an equal score and during the extra time both team scored once. Which means we needed penalties! Our keeper stopped all five penalties so when we sored the first penatly, we knew we earned the world title!
@Home perfomed an excellent final, but they received too little points to compensate for the small gap between them and the first place holder, Tobi. So they are second in the @Home league!! A very impressive outcome!
The first matchday of RoboCup 2016 is over. It was a successful day for both teams. For the care robots, three challenges were scheduled. SERGIO had to navigate and avoid obstacles and during the Speech Recognition Challenge he had to answer a lot of questions. Answering the questions went very well but he had some troubles with navigating to the right person. AMIGO also did a challenge today. During the Person Recognition Challenge he was presented to a person after which the person positioned himself into the crowd. It was the task of AMIGO to find that person and provide some background informations, i.e. male/female or age.
The football robots have also played their first matches. The first match against our German friends from Carpe Noctem ended in a 11-0 victory. Also the matches against the ASML Falcons and the Japanese team Hibikino-Musashi ended in a victory of our robots. During the first day we scored 32 times and our keeper Hans van Sleutelen kept his goal clean; 0 goals against. A great start of the soccer robots!
The website for this spectacular robot event is online! The RoboCup European Open 2016 will take place from 30 March till 3 April in the Evoluon in Eindhoven, the Netherlands. On 30 March, doors will be open for visitors. Participants from countries all over the world will battle against eachother in different robot competitions. The RoboCup Soccer league includes the Small Size League, Middle Size League, and the Standard Platform League. The robotteams from these leagues are playing soccer at different levels. Besides the soccer competitions, there is also the @Home League. The service robots will do task in a household environment, such as serving a drink, cleaning or saving people in an emergency. All these major leagues are mostly participated by university teams and researchers. There are also leagues for younger people, focused on children till 17 years old. Children can participate with their dance, soccer or rescue robots. You can find everything about the tournament on www.robocupeuropeanopen.org.
Unfortunately no title on day of finals at RoboCup 2015
The last day of RoboCup 2015 was all about the big finals. Both the soccer robots as the service robots can become world champion today. This would be a fantastic reward for all the hard work of the team.
The soccer robots will start with their semi-final against ARES from China. They play with the old robots of Water and also there style of play is similar. Earlier in the tournament we played a 5-5 draw against this team so it will be a tough match. Our robots have a good start and they take the lead early in the match. This lead is not been given away and after 30 minutes there is 4-2 score on the scorebord in advance for Tech United. After this match the team prepares the robots for the match we've all been waiting for. The final against our all-time rival Water. Unfortunately the match starts very bad for us and after only 90 seconds the Chinese team already leads with 2-0. After a while they score their third goal and just before half-time we manage to score our first goal of the match. Half time score; 3-1. The second half is very nerve-wrecking and team Water is very efficient in their play and their defence is strong. Eventually Water was found too strong. End score; 4-1. The disappointment is large but Water was the worthy winner.
The final of AMIGO and SERGIO is also a thing that didn't go as planned. Before the final challenge the team expected that with a good performance they would definiately have a chance to take the world title. Tech United starts the challenge on a third position. At the start of the challenge there is an error with the Kinect of SERGIO. The restarts consumes a lot of time and only a few minutes are left for the challenge. The remaining time seemed too short to impress the judges. "This was the best prepared, and worst performed demonstration ever", according to team member Sjoerd van den Dries. The German team Homer performs a solid service robot-demo and grabs the title. Eventually, AMIGO and SERGIO end on a disappointing fourth place.
So, a week of hard work wasn't rewarded with the desired results. Nevertheless we are proud of what we reached with our group. The renewed livestream during the final was a big success. Also our twitter channel was booming during the final. NOS, RTL, Omroep Brabant, Metro, VI, Ministry of Education, Culture and Science, NU.nl, Tweakers and all big radiostations in the Netherlands have paid attention to the result in China. Both teams are heading for their next tournament, RoboCup Dutch Open in 2016!
On the fifth day of RoboCup 2015 it's all about reaching the finals of tomorrow. AMIGO and SERGIO must finish in the top five to reach the final and the soccer robots must become first or second in their poule to receive a ticket to the semi-final.
The soccer robots start the day with a match agains CS_Rob. Unfortunately, this Chinese opponent must stop the match after 7 minutes due to technical problems. Final score; 7-0. The second opponent is MRL from Iran. This was always a tough opponent in previous years but this year they are not able to make a fist. After 30 minutes the score is 8-0 for Tech United. The last opponent of today is Robit. This can not be considered as a tough hurdle because we manage to score 17 times during the match; 17-0. The highlights of these matches can be seen here te bekijken.
AMIGO and SERGIO start their day with the Wake Me Up Challenge. In this challenge, AMIGO has to wake someone up, give him the newspaper and bring a nice breakfast. Unfortunately he drops the box of cereal before he reaches the table but his performance is not bad. This is followed by the RoboNurse, this is a bit more difficult for AMIGO. Several things don't go as they should be going. This is followed by the Restaurant Challenge. This challenge was tested very well at the TU/e but during the challenge there were some problems with speech recognition. Just before time runs out, SERGIO begins his tasks but there is too little time to score much points. The service robots will start the final on a third position and need to get 100 points more than WrightEagle to take the world title.
Tomorrow is D-day for both teams. The soccer robots will have to beat ARES in the semi-final before team Water waits in the final. AMIGO and SERGIO will have to get 100 points more than the number one to have a chance to take the title. Curious about the highlights of stage 1 in the @Home-league? Check the video.
Both teams on schedule for world title after third day
The third day of RoboCup 2015 starts at 8.00 a.m. like every other day. The soccer robots will play their first official match and the service robots are facing four challenges today.
The first match of the soccer robots is against Lushan, from China. From the first whistle, it is clear that this match would not be a tough one. They don't have five players on the field and their robots are not as fast as ours. After 30 minutes, there is 20-0 on the score board in favor of Tech United. A good start of the tournament! The second game is agains ARES, also from China. This team is unknown for us and from the beginnen we knew that this would be a tough match. Even though we had some fast attacks and fantastick ball interceptions, the score was equal; 5-5. The third match of today is against the Japanese team Hibikino-Musashi. This match was also one way traffic in the direction of the Japanese goal; 15-0.
The schedule of AMIGO and SERGIO includes the RoboZoo, Navigation, Person Recognition and Object Manipulation. AMIGO won three of the four challenges and together with the two challenges of yesterday, they posess the first place! This can be considered as a very succesful day at RoboCup for us. The successes in China are also noticed by the Dutch media. Both Omroep Brabant and NU.nl have published an article about us.
All the robots and team members have safely arrived in China for RoboCup 2015! Today is the first setup-day of the tournament. On Saturday, the soccer robots will have to do the Technical Challenge and Scientific Challenge. AMIGO and SERGIO will start Saturday with the Robot Inspection and Poster Session. The real challenges and matches will start on Sunday. At the moment, the team is very busy with getting the robots up-and-running. The soccer robots have already set foot on the holy grass of Hefei and AMIGO and SERGIO are driving around the @Home-area. You can find all the schedules, results, video's and livestreams on the live-page on the website.
