Dan's Biz Bookshelf: 'Getting Naked: A Business Fable'
The Chemical Connection: Common Misconceptions in Wet Processing
It’s Only Common Sense: Selling to Engineers
Wins for Soccer Robots and Service Robot at RoboCup European Open
April 11, 2016 | TU EindhovenEstimated reading time: 3 minutes
TU Eindhoven teams booked victories in two branches of sport at the RoboCup European Open 2016, in the Eindhoven Evoluon. On finals day the TU/e soccer robots beat their Portuguese opponents CAMBADA by 2-0. The Eindhoven AMIGO care robot team beat the reigning world champion, Homer, in the @Home League. In the other two categories German teams from Bielefeld and Mannheim booked victories. The event attracted some 15000 visitors and the final of the robot soccer had a crowd of 2000 people.
Elite class
The TU/e soccer robots won the Middle Size League, the unofficial elite class of the RoboCup in which mobile robots of around eighty centimeters tall play with a real soccer ball. Each robot player in this category thinks and plays autonomously – so no joysticks to be seen.
In the final the Eindhoven team met the Portuguese CAMBADA team, the only opponent to have given Eindhoven any real opposition in the preliminary rounds. The first half of the final was exciting but produced no goals. In the second half, the Eindhoven team gained a clear upper hand, scored twice and ran out winners by two goals to nil.
“After the break we started to take shots much earlier, which created chances and free kicks,” says team coach Lotte de Koning of TU/e about the match. “The atmosphere in the stadium was really good, everyone was cheering. It doesn’t happen too often that you play in front of such a big crowd. It gave me goose bumps.”
It is striking to note that the finals of the Middle Size League were shown live via NU.nl, the biggest news website in the Netherlands.
Out of the box and down to work
TU Eindhoven’s robot AMIGO won the @Home-League, a competition for robots that act as a home helper, by a clear distance. The matches comprised challenges, like taking orders for drinks and then serving them in the right place. The Eindhoven team beat the first and third placed teams of the 2015 world championships, Homer of the university of Koblenz and ToBI of the university of Bielefeld, when the team from Eindhoven came fourth. “It’s a really good sign that we were able to beat them,” was the reaction of team captain Janno Lunenburg. “It gives us a good springboard to go to Leipzig at the end of June for the 2016 world championships.”
AMIGO grabbed a lead mainly through the open task assignment. Lunenburg: “Our robot is very quickly able to learn an unknown environment and perform complex tasks. Which is what you will want if you buy a robot: that you can get it out of the box and it can get to work immediately without having to be programmed.”
Germans win Small Size and Standard Platform League
The tournament also saw soccer played in the Small Size League and Standard Platform League. The Small Size League, where teams of small robots on wheels play using a golf ball, was won by Tigers Mannheim, of the Duale Hochschule Baden-Württemberg. The Standard Platform League, in which all teams are comprised of exactly the same types of robot, which means it’s all down to the programming, was won by team B-Human, of the university of Bremen.
Fast progress
The aim of the RoboCup tournaments is to accelerate the development of affordable and reliable autonomous robotics, for example robots as home helpers that can enable senior citizens to live independently at home for longer. Since the rules are constantly becoming more strict and teams share the knowledge they gain after the tournaments, the technology is progressing quickly.
The tournament was made possible by support from sponsors including TU Eindhoven, the Dutch Ministry of Economic Affairs, The Province of Noord-Brabant, the municipality of Eindhoven, Fontys University of Applied Sciences and the company Kora.
Share on:
Suggested Items
Rules of Thumb: Design007 Magazine, November 2024
11/11/2024 | I-Connect007 Editorial TeamRules of thumb are everywhere, but there may be hundreds of rules of thumb for PCB design. They’re built on design formulas, fabricators’ limitations, and tribal knowledge. And unfortunately, some longtime rules of thumb should be avoided at all costs. How do we separate the wheat from the chaff, so to speak?
Connect the Dots: Best Practices for Prototyping
09/21/2023 | Matt Stevenson -- Column: Connect the DotsPCB prototyping is a critical juncture during an electronic device’s journey from concept to reality. Regardless of a project’s complexity, the process of transforming a design into a working board is often enlightening in terms of how a design can be improved before a PCB is ready for full production.
The Drive Toward UHDI and Substrates
09/20/2023 | I-Connect007 Editorial TeamPanasonic’s Darren Hitchcock spoke with the I-Connect007 Editorial Team on the complexities of moving toward ultra HDI manufacturing. As we learn in this conversation, the number of shifting constraints relative to traditional PCB fabrication is quite large and can sometimes conflict with each other.
Asia/Pacific AI Spending Surge to Reach a Projected $78 Billion by 2027
09/19/2023 | IDCAsia/Pacific spending on Artificial Intelligence (AI) ), including software, services, and hardware for AI-centric systems will grow to $78.4 billion in 2027, according to International Data Corporation's latest Worldwide Artificial Intelligence Spending Guide.
Intel to Sell Minority Stake in IMS Nanofabrication Business to TSMC
09/13/2023 | IntelIntel Corporation announced that it has agreed to sell an approximately 10% stake in the IMS Nanofabrication business to TSMC. TSMC’s investment values IMS at approximately $4.3 billion, consistent with the valuation of the recent stake sale to Bain Capital Special Situations.