18/07/2022
Door Ad Spijkers
Tech United has won the robot football tournament for the sixth time and takes the title of the care robots for the second time.
The RoboCup, the world championship for autonomous robots, has been a great success for the Dutch TU Eindhoven student team Tech United. The last World Cup was in Sydney in 2019. Due to corona, the university was regularly closed and the team members could not get together as often. Nevertheless, they made great progress.
Both the football robots (with robots named after the Dutch ladies football team) and care robot Hero prolonged their world title in Thailand. This makes Tech United the world champion of robot football for the sixth time. For the care robots it was their second World Cup title.
During the World Cup robot football, the robots play fully autonomous five-on-five matches using sensors and innovative software. Last year Tech United improved the football robots in several areas, such as dribbling and changing tactics during the match. The ultimate goal of the team is to be able to beat the human world champion in 2050 with autonomous football robots.
Finals
In robot football, the robots from Eindhoven were clearly best in class of their own this year. Many matches were won with high scores. The final was also won very convincingly: it was 15-0 against the Falcons of chip machine manufacturer ASML in Veldhoven (close to Eindhoven). In the previous confrontation during the preliminaries, the ASML Falcons won 4-3. This had everything to do with a mistake in the software that Tech United made in that match. The fault was rectified in the final; Lieke Motors (named after ladies football star Lieke Martens) was the hero of the final match with five goals.
The final of the care robots was a lot more exciting. In the end Hero (photo) narrowly won from its opponent TidyBoy, a robot developed by South Korean students from various universities. During the tournament, the care robots had to perform various household tasks in the so-called @Home competition, such as taking out the rubbish and welcoming people. In addition, a jury in the finals judged challenges created by the robots themselves, such as notifying the neighbours in case of an accident.
The care robot can do a lot, such as recognising people and picking up objects, but Tech United's test environment at the TU Eindhoven is familiar territory. That's why the team is constantly improving the software so that Hero functions well in every environment. In Bangkok the robot had to deal with a new location and different objects, but ultimately proved well prepared for that.
Photo: Tech United