The RoboCup World Cup is here!

As many of you know, RoboCup 2017 will commence next week! On Sunday the 23^rd of July we will depart to Nagoya early in the morning. On Monday we will take our time in exploring Nagoya and getting familiar with the Japanese culture. Tuesday and Wednesday are setup days and on Wednesday the MSL team will also take part in the Scientific and Technical Challenge. From Thursday through Sunday, the competitions will take place. And Sunday is of course the day of the finals! We will keep you up to date with all the new and fresh scoops of the day through Social Media, the website and our (dutch) newsletter!

Tech United second during German Open 2017!

On Tuesday the @Home team arrives in Magdeburg for the German Open 2017. The @Home competition of the German Open resembles the competition of the world championships and is therefore great preparation for Japan. Just like during the world championships, the competition is based on challenges. The teams must all attempt various challenges to obtain as many points as possible. A description of all challenges can be found here. This year, seven teams are competing in the @Home league, amongst which ToBi, the robot that beat Tech United in the world championships last year where Tech United became second.

The first two days, Wednesday and Thursday, are setup days. During these days, the robots get familiar with the arena and are prepared for all the challenges. Thursday is also the registration day, during this day, the robots have to register themselves and various safety checks are performed. On top of that, the team also holds a poster presentation to show the improvements that have been made over the last year. Then, on Friday and Saturday, the days are filled with challenges. On both days, four challenges are scheduled. To see how AMIGO performed during these challenges, check out the various videos that have been made during the German Open.

Sunday is the day of the final. The five teams with the highest score go to the finals. Those five teams are Tech United, ToBi, Homer, RT Lions and SSC. During the final every team can show something of their choice, much like the Open Challenge. The jury consists of people from the @Home league and people from the business world, they will judge the presentation. At 12:30 AM the finals get started and Tech United starts in the fourth position, at 1:15 PM. Tech United gives away a great demonstration and presentation that can be viewed here. After the jury has deliberated, the score is given and Tech United has claimed the second place! Tech United received the most points for the final, but it was not enough to overcome the lead of Homer. A great performance by Tech United! 

Tech United wins first place Portuguese Open 2017!

The MSL team arrives at Coimbra on Wednesday evening after a long day of traveling. The Portuguese Open is held in Coimbra and Tech United, along with 6 other teams, is competing for the first place in the Middle Size League. The Portuguese Open is great practice for the world championships in Japan, so the team is working hard to fix all bugs and add new features so they can be tested before the world championships. Tech Uniteds’ biggest rival in this competition is CAMBADA, Tech United and CAMBADA faced each other in the final of the Portuguese Open 2016 and CAMBADA won. However, in the world championships 2016 in Leipzig Tech United became world champion and thereby beat CAMBADA. So that promises some great matches during this competition!

In the first two competition days, Friday and Saturday, all teams play against each other. Then, based on the result of these matches, the semi-finals and finals are played on Sunday. Of the six matches Tech United plays during the first two competition days, two are cancelled due to technical problems of the opposite teams. Of the remaining four matches, Tech United wins three. The match versus CAMBADA is an exciting one and ends in a tie! All matched that are played are summarized in the form of a video, and you can watch them using this link. On Sunday the semi-final is played versus the ASML Falcons, which ended in a baffling 11 – 0 for Tech United! This means we are facing CAMBADA in the final, and we’re ready to beat their asses!

At 13:00 the final against CAMBADA starts, and within one minute Tech United scores! But the team knows better than to bust out the melted butter early. But then, within three minutes of the first goal, Tech United scores once more! CAMBADA’s offense play is incredible, but luckily so is our keeper! After a long period of fast heartbeats, sweaty palms and nervous looks the match comes to an end with an amazing score of 2 – 0 for Tech United. We have thereby won the MSL competition of the Portuguese Open 2017.

MSL WORLD CHAMPION, @Home 2nd place at RoboCup

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!

Good start at RoboCup 2016

Good start at RoboCup 2016

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!

RoboCup European Open 2016

Eindhoven hosts RoboCup European Open 2016

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.