The first match day was a walkover for Bremen: They won all three matches and ended the day with a superb goal difference of 25:0. On day 2, the team then came up against two particularly strong opponents. The Nao Devils from the Technical University Dortmund scored in a highly competitive first round match in the first half against B-Human. At this time, though, the Bremen players were completely outnumbered: In the space of just four minutes, the referee had sent off four players for pushing. This was doubly disadvantageous for B-Human, since as of this year the time penalties are extended by ten seconds for each foul. Against the Nao team HTWK from the Leipzig University of Applied Sciences, who were later crowned the new German champions, Team B-Human could only manage a draw – meaning they could then only play for third place. They won this match 5:0 against the HULKs from the Technical University of Hamburg-Harburg. The subsequent final ended in a clear victory for Leipzig, with 5:2 against the team from Dortmund.
New rules with free kick and goalkeeper kick
In addition to the new time penalties, this year’s championship in Magdeburg also saw the introduction of free kicks and goalkeeper kicks. This significantly stepped up the requirement for team play. At the same time, the available bandwidth of WLAN communication between the robots was reduced by almost two thirds, which meant that the interchange of team tactics had to be much more compact. The RoboCup Standard Platform League is played in teams of five NAOs on a nine-by-six-square-meter pitch made of artificial turf. The name NAO refers to the humanoid robots produced by the French manufacturer Aldebaran Robotics. These robots act completely autonomously, can communicate with each other via WLAN, and can interpret the decisions of the human referee. To achieve this, the assistant referee transmits signals to the players via computer.
About Team B-Human
Team B-Human currently consists of more than 25 students from the University of Bremen as well as the scientists Dr. Thomas Röfer from the DFKI Research Unit Cyber-Physical Systems, headed by Professor Rolf Drechsler and Tim Laue from the University of Bremen. On June 14, 2018, the Bremen squad will be traveling to the RoboCup World Championships, which will be held on June 18-22, 2018, in Montréal, Canada. That, they hope, is going to be a completely different ball game!
More information under:
The official website of the RoboCup German Open 2018:
www.robocupgermanopen.de (in German only)
The Team B-Human homepage:
www.b-human.de
If you would like to know more about this topic, feel free to contact:
Dr. Tim Laue
Faculty of Mathematics and Computer Science
University of Bremen
Phone: +49 421 218-64209
Email: tlaueprotect me ?!uni-bremenprotect me ?!.de
Dr. Thomas Röfer
Section Cyber-Physical Systems
Deutsches Forschungszentrum für Künstliche Intelligenz GmbH (DFKI)
Phone: +49 421 218-64200
Email: Thomas.Roeferprotect me ?!dfkiprotect me ?!.de
