Equipped with EtherCAT for interfacing to drives, sensors and actuators, the soccer robots of the Dutch Team Tech United Eindhoven won the RoboCup German Open in Hanover, Germany. In the semi-final they defeated the acting world champion of the Middle Size League, the Brainstormers Tribots from Osnabrück, Germany - a team unbeaten since 2004. In the finals it took a penalty shoot-out to beat the current number 3 in the world ranking, the CoPS Team from Stuttgart.
Six robot players form a team in the Middle Size League, the largest and fastest division in the RoboCup competition. Each of the three-wheeled robots weighs around 35 kg and acts autonomously without remote control. The robots have different roles such as goalkeeper, defender or striker and cooperate with each other in a team effort. Communication with the other team members is established through wireless Ethernet. Vision is provided by a camera pointing upwards towards a parabolic mirror, thus creating a 360° view of its surroundings. Using this image, the robot is able to determine its position. The robot controller is a mini PC with an EtherCAT Open Source master. This technology was chosen for its superior performance at low CPU load while not requiring any hardware extensions on the mini PC.
The RoboCup German Open is considered to be the ideal preparation tournament for the World Championships which took place in July in Suzhou, China.
RoboCup is an international joint project to promote artificial intelligence (AI), mobile robotics, and related fields. It is an attempt to foster AI and robotics research by providing a standard problem where a wide range of technologies can be integrated and examined. The ultimate goal of the RoboCup project is to develop a team of fully autonomous humanoid robots by 2050 that can win against the human world champion team in soccer.
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