It is a great success for German robot soccer: The NimbRo team becomes world champion! At the RoboCup tournament, which took place this year in Bordeaux, France, the German team of four humanoid robots proved to be unbeatable and won clearly in the final against a team from Korea. For the NimbRo team, led by Professor Sven Behnke, Principal Investigator of the Lamarr Institute, the successful defense of the title means that the intensive preparation and further development of the software and hardware have paid off.
The NimbRo robots developed at the University of Bonn entered the tournament as reigning world champions and thus as favorites, and did not disappoint the expectations of their developers and fans: With a clear 8:0 victory in the final and not a single goal conceded during the entire competition, the humanoid robots from Bonn showed themselves to be in top form right from the start and won the Humanoid-AdultSize class with aplomb.
The NimbRo robots with soccer talent were developed at the University of Bonn in the Autonomous Intelligent Systems working group of the Institute of Computer Science. The head of the working group is Professor Sven Behnke, who is also a Principal Investigator at the Lamarr Institute.
The NimbRo team includes four roughly human-sized robots whose software was further improved during the preparation phase for the tournament. After this conscientious training, the soccer robots benefited from an acceleration of their visual perception and thus kept track of what was happening on the pitch in real time. Physically, too, the players were in top condition and won numerous duels, maintained their balance even in dangerous situations, and demonstrated flexible kicking movements to put the ball into the goal quickly and unerringly.
RoboCup is an international initiative that organizes tournaments for intelligent robots in various categories. The aim of the competitions is to give further impetus to the development of robots and Artificial Intelligence. It’s not just fans of robot soccer who benefit from this. After all, humanoid robots that move quickly and securely on two legs and always keep an eye on their surroundings can also prove useful helpers in everyday life, for example in nursing or as delivery service workers.
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To the press release of the University of Bonn