RoboCup

RoboCup is an international robotics competition founded in 1997. The aim is to develop autonomous robots, which play soccer, with the intention of promoting research and education in the field of artificial intelligence. The name RoboCup is a contraction of the competition’s full name, “Robot Soccer World Cup”.

The RoboCup consists of five different leagues, the Simulation League, the Small Size Robot League, the Middle Size Robot League, the Humanoid League and the Standard Platform League. The Dutch Nao Team will be competing in the last.

In this league, all teams use identical robots (four per team). Therefore the teams concentrate solely on software development, while still using robots. The robots operate fully autonomous, i.e. there is no external control, neither by humans or by a central computer. Since 2008 the humanoid Nao’s manufactured by Aldebaran Robotics are used in this league.

Who are we?

We are the Dutch Nao Team from The Netherlands: University of Amsterdam, Faculty of Science, Informatics Institute

Team Profile: Our team consists of 23 second-year Artificial Intelligence (AI) students, supported by a senior staff-member. We made our debut in the SPL competition at the German Open 2010. The team is the continuation of the Dutch Aibo Team; a cooperation of several Dutch universities who were active in the predecessor of the Standard Platform League. The Dutch Aibo Team has been successful in both the competition and with a number of publications.

Research Topics: Artificial Intelligence, Computer Vision, Motion, Communication, World Modelling, Logic Programming

What is our goal?

This years events, where our team is qualified for, are:

• Iran Open 2013 (Tehran): April 5 – April 7, 2013
• World RoboCup 2013 (Eindhoven): June 26 – June 30, 2013

Our organization

We have split our team into teams, each with their own tasks and captains:

• Vision: The Nao’s have to be able to see and recognize the ball, the goals, the opponents and their teammates. But the Nao’s will also have to know where all those objects are in relation to themselves, in terms of distance and angle.
• Motion: The Motion Team focuses on all the Nao’s physical actions of the Nao’s: walking, kicking the ball and how to stand up after falling down.
• Communication: This team’s primary goal is to make the Nao’s ‘aware’ of the rules (fixed data) and their environment, which they will be communicating amongst each other.
• Architecture: This team designs the overlaying architecture. So that, in the end, the Nao’s are able to do all of the above at the same time.

Aside from the software development, the team consists of a couple of extra taskforces:

• Scientific Advisor
• Coordinator
• Vice-coordinator
• Sponsoring Team
• Media Team
• Expedition Leaders