The last tournament preperations are being done. From the 1st to the 4th of June, our soccer robots will be in Portugal for the European Cup. A bit more than a month later, both the soccer robots as the service robot will fly to Bangkok to compete in the World Cup. Will we be able to take prizes home this year?

European Cup Portugal (June 1-4)

This year the European Cup will take place inGuimarães, a city nearby Porto. We are going to play matches here for the first time in three years. The European Cup will be a moment to practise and prepare for the World Cup. It is at least a nice opportunity to test all the developments of the past years. Curious to see how it goes? We will keep everyone up to date via our livestream, website, newsletter and social media accounts!

World Cup Thailand (July 10-17)

The World Cup will take place in Bangkok this year. Both our MSL team as our @Home team will go there to defend their title from 2019. However, in the meantime a lot can have happened: new teams, brand new developments and other challenges. It will be exciting to see how we and our opponents have developed in the past few years. Can we come home with a new title this time?

Developments MSL

After the cancellations of the past years, the soccer robots can play again! From a new home at the TU/e, the building Impuls, the robots will travel to the tournaments in Portugal and Thailand. We have implemented new tactics that should lead to more variation in the games. Besides that, we are developing a new bottom platform for the robots. With the swerve drive platform, where every wheel has its own orientation and rotation, we will soon be able to play on different surfaces like (artificial) grass. Also, we are still working further on the (online) Technical Challenge of last year, where we demonstrated how the soccer robots can play together with humans. Because this year one human player per team will be allowed, we hope to be able to implement these developments during the games.

Developments @Home

After a lengthy hiatus the @home team is once again getting ready for the tournament. We have been preparing by developing new skills for our robot such as the ability to feel when it is holding something in hand and a new method of speech recognition. Now we are working diligently on the challenges presented in the tournament. In Bangkok our robot will have to take out the garbage, welcome guests into our homes and help us find someone in a crowded room. We are looking forward to seeing how much we ourselves as well as our colleagues have improved in the last three years. No doubt there will be much to learn in the far East!

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