For the second time in the history of the robot soccer tournament RoboCup, the event will be held in the Genneper Parken in Eindhoven. The goal is to eventually have soccer robots in 2050 which can beat the world champion.
Autonomous robots will compete in five-a-side matches from 17 to 21 July. René Molengraft, who holds the chair of Robotics at TU/e, has been involved in robot football at the technical university from the start. He founded the student team TechUnited in 2005. “We then also wanted to organise tournaments ourselves from TU/e,” says Molengraft.
“It was great that we managed to get the World Cup here in 2013. That we can organise the tournament again in 2024 is very special because many other cities also want this and are participating in the bid. It is very rare for a city to get the tournament for the second time.”
A total of three hundred teams from 45 countries are participating. Molengraft hopes to attract around 40,000 visitors to the four-day event, just like in 2013. Unlike eleven years ago, the level of the robots has increased considerably. That is a good thing because the ambition is to have developed robots by 2050 that could beat the world champion in football.
Steps taken
“The last five or six years, you can see that real steps have been taken in the field of passing, positional play and tactics,” says Molengraft. “We recently played a match with Saibari from PSV and street footballer Touzani for a program of the NPO. They are clearly still a few sizes too big for our robots. But a year ago we had a match against a football team with boys who were 12 years old. Those boys won 2-0, but the match was equal. It could also have ended in a draw.”
Driving and walking
Molengraft expects a new development towards 2030. “The tournament now consists partly of driving robots and partly of walking robots. Towards 2030, these two should grow towards each other. From the TU/e we are going to work on football robots with more than two legs. Once you have taken that step, towards 2050 it is only a matter of perfecting all the techniques.”
The RoboCup is more than an event for robotics enthusiasts. It ensures that the universities involved develop knowledge that is also applicable to other robots, such as care robots. Molengraft: “The tricky thing about designing autonomous robots is that you don’t know in advance what you are designing them for. Robots have to move in a world that is constantly changing. They have to understand for themselves what they must do to be able to perform their task.”
“Football is a very good way to learn how to do that,” Molengraft continues. “Because in football, new situations constantly arise to which the robots have to adapt. Moreover, people like to watch football, it is a good way to involve people in technological developments.”
Molengraft does not dare to say who is the big favourite to win the Robocup 2024. “I think our own TechUnited can do well. I also think that the Falcons – the ASML team – would like to win after having reached the finals for the past two years. Finally, I think that the team from the University of Toulon has a good chance.”
For Eindhoven News: beena Arunraj
Source: Studio040
