Though the Dutch national team missed the European title, there may be something to cheer about in Eindhoven this summer. The city is hosting the RoboCup World Championship.
Some 300 teams from 45 countries are participating in the tournament for soccer robots. The team to beat is defending champion and seven-time winner Tech United from the TU/e.
“We do it a few times a week in the evenings. Tech United has a lot of people from the university who work on certain parts for half a year,” Lex Coenen of The Falcons explains the class difference. Still, according to Danny Hameeteman of the reigning world champions, it is not a piece of cake. “You can see that the competition has improved a lot. It will be an exhilarating week.”
That comment doesn’t come out of the blue. The competition hasn’t been sitting still. “Where we used to look purely at colour. White is a line, green is the field, and yellow is the ball. Now, we use an algorithm like Google to detect a dog in a photo. That makes it much faster and more precise,” says Coenen.
Not people, but robots
Once on the football field, it’s up to the robots themselves. “Everything the robot does, it does by itself. There is no human controlling everything,” says Arka Mitra of ETH Zurich. “They communicate with each other where the ball is, where they are and what the next action is. The only thing we can do ourselves is make sure they stop in time,” adds Hameeteman.
Robot Body
The underside of a robot should be a maximum of 52×52 cm and a minimum of 30×30 cm, and its height should not exceed 80 cm. The robot must also be black with a brightly coloured marking so the referee and other robots can easily recognise it. There are also other requirements related to communication sensors (robots talk to each other and with the referee via WiFi). The most important thing for a soccer robot is to recognise his teammates, the opponent, the lines on the pitch and the ball. Tech United robots have two types of eyes for two different purposes: on top is the ‘OmniVision’ camera, and in front a Kinect.
RoboCup will take place in the Genneper Parken until Sunday. The organisation hopes for fifty thousand visitors.
