Category Archives: RoboTeam Twente

RoboCup 2024: Review

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Tournament

In our Division A of the Small Size League of RoboCup this year, nine teams from five countries competed against each other. A special feature was the two newcomers RobôCIn and luhbots, who this year made the step from Division B to a larger field and more robots in Division A. After three setup days, the teams first competed in a 4-team and 5-team group during the two group match days. The top three teams from each group then advanced to the knockout phase over the next two match days. By securing second place in our group, we were able to secure a good starting position here. In the double elimination mode, the respective group winners and runners-up could each lose once without being eliminated from the tournament. Thanks to our good performances on the field, we managed to secure a solid third place for our team despite many games in the lower bracket. Second place went to the Chinese team ZJUNlict and the current and past world champion is TIGERs Mannheim. A special mention should definitely go to the two new teams who managed to play exciting and balanced games against long-standing Division A teams almost right from the start. Particularly, the fourth place of RobôCIn is an extremely strong performance. At this point, we would also like to expressly thank luhbots, Immortals, RoboTeam Twente, RobôCIn, and TIGERs Mannheim for their help and extraordinary commitment to the league. This is by no means a matter of course.

 

Our Team in the Tournament

For us, the RoboCup started off quite bumpy again, and the first fears arose that we might experience a similar disaster to 2023 in Bordeaux. Fortunately, this was not the case. Instead, we managed to solve individual problems step by step. During the setup days and our first game, we still struggled considerably with our radio system and the control of the robots. But by the second game, we were already capable of fielding 11 robots. Nonetheless, we refrained from doing so in the group phase and fielded 8 robots each time. This was mainly because we were still plagued by overheating issues, and substitute robots were therefore extremely valuable.

For the knockout stage, we took a bold step and removed unnecessary parts from the module connector PCB and equipped our motor boards with heat sinks. Together with a relentless hunt for individual faulty robot components, we were able to increase the reliability of our fleet so that we could permanently field 11 robots in the knockout phase. This is a strong performance by the entire team, and we are excited about what the future holds with the now fully functional robots. Thus, we can conclude this RoboCup, tired from the strenuous days, but satisfied with our progress and success.

 

Betting Game

A novelty this year was the betting game we organized for RoboCup 2024. Just like in conventional football, bets could be placed on individual games, the outcome of the group phase, and the overall tournament. The most points were collected by our team members Michi and Mike, who stayed at home. Due to the great support from other teams, we plan to set up an official betting game for RoboCup next year.

 

Impressions

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

RoboCup 2025

Now that RoboCup 2024 in Eindhoven has ended and all teams have departed, we look to the future. We look forward to an interesting year with many improvements and innovations in our strategy and robots, as well as visits from other teams. But of course, our main focus is on the next RoboCup 2025. It will take place from July 15 to July 21, 2025, in the Brazilian coastal city of Salvador. The first images of the location already make us excited for sun, warmth, and of course a RoboCup hall right next to one of Brazil’s beautiful beaches.

See you in Salvador!

 

RoboCup Eindhoven: Arrival

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After nearly a year, it’s finally time again: RoboCup 2024 is here, this year in the Dutch city of Eindhoven! Teams from all over the world and various leagues are currently traveling and will all try to claim first place in their respective leagues!

Of course, our team is also ready to go, and this morning 14 students from our team boarded a train in Nuremberg heading to Essen. What they didn’t know at the time: The train in Düsseldorf that would take them to Venlo doesn’t exist. This brings back memories of a popular meme from last year:

So, our travel group will likely arrive at the hotel in Eindhoven with an estimated delay of one hour and begin to take over the hotel rooms and floors for us and our robots. Starting next week, our team will be allowed into the hall!

By the way: Besides us, this year’s Division A will also feature teams ZJUNlict (China), KIKS (Japan), RoboCîn (Brazil), luhbots (Germany), TIGERs Mannheim (reigning world champion, Germany), Immortals (Germany), RoboDragons (Japan), and RoboTeam Twente (Netherlands). From experience, TIGERs Mannheim, ZJUNlict, and Immortals are particularly strong teams that we need to surpass!

RoboCup Crailsheim: luhbots vs RoboTeam Twente

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The first match of the final day of RoboCup Crailsheim takes place between the third and fourth place teams from the group stage. The winner of this match will be our next opponent in the 1 PM game, as we positioned ourselves in second place during the group stage.

First Half

02:49 Twente takes a timeout.
02:49 Twente ends the timeout, but before the game can resume, a Twente bot spins wildly in circles.
02:07 Twente makes a bot substitution, and luhbots receive a yellow card for ball placement interference.
02:00 Twente plays the ball out of bounds, but luhbots fail at their ball placement, giving Twente a dangerous free kick.
01:29 luhbots shoot at the goal, but the Twente goalkeeper skillfully saves the ball. Both teams have had dangerous situations so far.
01:00 Twente holds the ball too long in their penalty area, giving luhbots a free kick which they convert into a goal. It’s 1:0 for luhbots.
00:15 luhbots commit a bot crash.
00:12 Out by Twente at their own goal line. luhbots get a corner.

Second Half

04:15 luhbots chip the ball over the boundary into the audience during their own ball placement.
04:10 Twente takes their second timeout and ends it again after about 10 seconds.
04:04 Twente makes a robot substitution and takes a robot off the field.
03:31 Twente holds the ball too long in the penalty area. luhbots get a free kick but fail at their ball placement, so the free kick goes to Twente.
03:25 A robot hits the already weakened goal wall of Twente, causing it to come loose. It is provisionally repaired while Twente makes another robot substitution.
02:52 Twente narrowly misses the luhbots’ goal.
01:07 luhbots score their second goal. It’s 2:0 for luhbots.
00:57 luhbots take the ball from Twente shortly after their kickoff and immediately score another goal.
00:34 Twente again takes too long to play the ball out of their penalty area, giving luhbots a dangerous free kick. They fail at the ball placement again, so the free kick goes to Twente.
00:01 luhbots hold the ball too long in the penalty area this time, and Twente converts the free kick directly into a goal to at least bring the score to 3:1, showing they won’t go down without a fight, although it doesn’t change luhbots’ victory.

Note: The above information is based on the public communication of the organizer. Our club is not the organizer of the tournament and therefore cannot independently verify the information.

RoboCup Crailsheim: ER-Force vs. RoboTeam Twente

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Directly after our game against TIGERs Mannheim, we continue with our third match of the day: ER-Force vs. RoboTeam Twente. We are, of course, hoping for a win here to secure a good starting position in the knockout phase on Sunday.

If we win this game, RoboTeam Twente will surely finish fourth in the group. Additionally, we are almost certainly second, as it is unlikely that luhbots will win against the world champion TIGERs Mannheim. The latter are already sure to finish first.

First Half

05:00 The game starts almost on time with a kickoff by Twente. In this game, there is again automatic game commentary from the speaker, which makes the game much more accessible.
05:00 Since we are not quite finished with our setup, we start the game with a timeout. Quickly checking if our AI is started in the correct mode, laptops are plugged in, and nothing else stands in the way of a victory before the game can really begin.
03:45 After Twente’s robots lose some parts, there is an emergency break by Twente, costing them a timeout.
03:30 The game goes on quietly, and a goal for us falls quite unobtrusively.
ER-Force 1 : 0 RoboTeam Twente
03:30 Twente uses the game interruption to take a timeout and check their robots.
03:24 And the goals keep coming: Once again, we successfully put the ball into the net, further extending our lead.
ER-Force 2 : 0 RoboTeam Twente
03:24 Even though we are currently scoring goals, the game is extremely leisurely and feels more like a Sunday game. It must be said, however, that we are currently testing a new motor control and new motor boards, so it was expected that the game wouldn’t be ultra exciting.
03:01 After questioning the loyalty of one of our robots, as it behaves more like an opponent’s robot, there is a robot substitution.
02:28 Initially, our 1 gives the impression of a great performance, successfully executing ball placement. But this impression is quickly dispelled when it botches the subsequent throw-in.
01:45 Maybe we should hang a net around the field: For no reason and to the great confusion of all our computer scientists, our robot chips the ball out of the field during a game pause. Definitely something we want to look into.
01:21 Now there are some camera problems. Already yesterday (technically this morning), the camera caused sleepless nights, as among other things, the yellow paper was not well recognized by the camera.
00:19 Our Spätzle has to be substituted due to knee injuries (= motor failure): Spätzle’s knees became as soft as… well, Spätzle.
00:03 Almost at the end of the first half, we manage to increase our score: a goal for us. But the goal doesn’t count, as we previously committed a double touch: our robot kicked the ball twice in succession without passing to a teammate in between. This is a foul.
00:00 Thus, the game goes into halftime. The game action wasn’t exactly grand, but at least it matches the amount of sleep most of our team members had last night.
00:00 The halftime is used to flash the robots anew.

Second Half

05:00 As our team members are still trying to get our robots a bit more up to speed by flashing them, but the halftime break is running out, we also start the second half with a timeout.
05:00 Since we are also running out of timeout, the second half starts just as leisurely as the last half ended. Since this game is our last for the day, we have more than enough time to tackle the problem calmly.
02:43 This half offers very few highlights: The ball moves very leisurely, the game is often interrupted by shots out of bounds by RoboTeam Twente.
00:57 The game is so boring right now that I didn’t even notice two goals being scored. Meanwhile, there’s already a discussion on how we can pimp our firmware to eventually compete against TIGERs. So far, however, our hardware gives the impression that we can expect significant improvements from a software perspective in the coming weeks, which is very positive. Regardless, two goals for us!
ER-Force 4 : 0 RoboTeam Twente
00:43 One last timeout for us to tweak the hardware a bit more.
00:06 We stylishly close the game with a final, fifth goal.
ER-Force 5 : 0 RoboTeam Twente

Reading the game might seem rather sobering, but we are fundamentally very happy with our robots’ performance. It was already expected that new hardware would not work immediately and that only a limited amount of manpower could be devoted to designing new motor board firmware and motor control over a weekend. All the more, we are pleased that the robots run so well and reliably. This becomes even more understandable considering that we only received our new motor boards five days ago and thus could hardly test them.

Additionally, our HBC radio has so far only shone on the large field; radio problems are now officially a thing of the past, both on the small Division B fields and the large 12x9m² Division A field, much to our delight.

Since we are now almost guaranteed to be second place, we will probably not have any mandatory games today and will instead play our next game tomorrow afternoon.

Note: The above information is based on the public communication of the organizer. Our club is not the organizer of the tournament and therefore cannot independently verify the information.

BuGa 2023: Conclusion

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As the tournament at the Bundesgartenshow (BuGa) is now coming to an end and we have secured an excellent second place, we’d like to take a moment to reflect on our journey.

Compared to the RoboCup 2023 in Bordeaux, we were able to significantly improve our performance with the new robots: The radio communication issues have been completely resolved, and our robots executed their driving commands as precisely as they haven’t in years. This clearly demonstrates the advantage of robust industrial solutions like the HBC radio system compared to our previous custom solutions.

The motor board problems have also nearly disappeared as a result. The theory here is as follows: When our robots don’t receive radio signals, they shut down all wheel modules as a safety measure to avoid being a hazard to people and themselves. However, this also results in an abrupt shutdown of all wheel motors, and the remaining current circulating through them, due to the electrical principle of inductance, which dictates that current through electric motors cannot cease instantaneously, can lead to defects in the Motor Controller Boards.

So, when we have radio communication issues, the modules are regularly and unexpectedly shut down. When everything works smoothly, the activation and deactivation maneuvers are carefully controlled at the beginning and end of a game: The motors are brought to a halt by the AI, and then the modules are shut down.

Aside from these two issues, the new robots required very little maintenance—compared to their predecessor generation as well. Only some motor connectors showed problems on the board side: It seems that the through-hole connections of the pads are breaking, causing the power lines on the Power Distribution Board to detach from the motor. We were able to prove this through resistance measurements.

Since we also had problems with our shooting board (same PCB manufacturer)—back then, the solder mask had peeled off from almost all traces at certain spots—we seriously need to consider switching to a different PCB manufacturer.

Nevertheless, it was an excellent tournament that reinvigorated not only our robots but also the spirits of many team members. The enthusiasm is clearly noticeable among all the present members. The positive developments of the other teams since the RoboCup—especially RoboTeam Twente, whose performance improved drastically over the last month—have further fueled our members’ motivation. And so, after the final match, we actively joined the other teams in dismantling the tournament.

We are already looking forward to competing against all the amazing teams at the next European event. It was a pleasure playing against them this weekend. And so, we bid you a heartfelt farewell from the BuGa!