06.08.2008
High-tech footballers defend world title
High tech is not just a matter of high performance – it’s a lot of fun as well. (Copyright: Team NimbRo)
In the RoboCup world championship in Suzhou, China, the Team NimbRo football robots of the universities of Freiburg and Bonn won the tournament in the KidSize class of the humanoid league. 24 teams from twelve countries qualified for the tournament. For the fourth time in a row, the Germans faced Team Osaka from Japan in the final and successfully defended their previous year’s title as world champions.
Team NimbRo is a partnership between the universities of Freiburg and Bonn that is financed mainly by the German Research Foundation (DFG). After the final, team manager Prof. Sven Behnke looked back on the event: “The demands on the robots were much higher this year. The number of players was increased, the playing field enlarged and the permissible field of vision reduced. We nevertheless managed to make the robots faster and more reliable and improve their teamwork.” In the KidSize class, three autonomous humanoid robots play in each team. The players may be no larger than 60 cm. The playing field measures four by six metres, and the game consists of two halves of ten minutes each. The robots move across the playing field at speeds of up to 50 cm per second, observing the game situation with their cameras, dribbling, shooting and getting back up under their own power after taking a spill. The robots of a team use a wireless network to co-ordinate their actions.
The RoboCup Federation has been organizing the international RoboCup tournaments since 1997. Its long-term goal is to field a team that will beat the FIFA world champion in 2050. In addition to the football tournament, RoboCup also organizes competitions for rescue robots (RoboCupRescue) and domestic assistants (RoboCup@Home). For further information, please visit
http://www.nimbro.net and
http://www.robocup-cn.org/
