We are the HTWK Robots - a robotics football team that participates in RoboCup Standard Platform League. Here, all teams compete with identical robots that operate autonomously during gameplay.
In 2018, we won the RoboCup in Montréal. As of 2025, we are the World Champion in the Humanoid League KidSize division.
RoboCup 2024 – we’re going to Eindhoven! Today, with palpable
exictement in the air and lots of heavy equipment in our bags, the
day had finally come – catch the train to Frankfurt – Düsseldorf
– Herzogenrath – Heerlen – Eindhoven each time switching into a
slower train. The last one felt like it was going backwards through
the station, but that might just have been us – excited about the
week ahead, we just couldn’t wait to get there. But apparently, we
were not alone in that. Some trains Eindhoven-wards were so
overfilled, they looked more like a RoboCup match with horrible
lighting conditions in Round 1: everyone is really crowded and
stumbling over each other, packages are getting lost everywhere,
nothing is moving and the people in charge are trying to make sense
while making sure noone breaks anything. We took one good look and
knew – we’re better off taking the next train. That turned out to
be the right idea – in the end, we arrived at the main station
faster than otherwise. We were immediately greeted by RoboCup flags
and posters everywhere! Eindhoven seems to be just as excited as we
are.
Having made it to the Hotel, we quickly unpacked and went out for
dinner and some final inspiration before the cup in form of the
European Championship title match between Spain and England. Fun
Fact: Our signature kick-off move is conincidentally identical to the
back pass maneauver by Real Madrid. A case of true convergent
software evolution! And the Spanish must be doing something right! So
if that’s not a good omen, I don’t know what is!
Tomorrow, we’ll start our first of two set-up days before
matches commence on Wednesday. The technical challenge concludes on
Friday and the Main Round of the Champion’s Cup will keep us busy
on the weekend. We’ll post the schedule, links to the live stream
and more updates as we get them!
Ohne HollandNach Holland Nach Noord-Brabant fahr'n wir zur WM!
As the UEFA Euro Championship slowly but surely draws to it's climax, we're just getting started! On Sunday, July 14th, we're heading to Eindhoven for this year's RoboCup. The sting of last year's 0:9 final against B-Human was memorably unpleasant, at the German Open in April we managed a 4:1 against the northeners which isn't exactly a win, I know, but it didn't go unnoticed that we applied a considerable amount of pressure and ruined their perfect score balance, ha! In case you missed it:
But yes, losing by a smaller margin is less bad but obviously not enough to dethrone the reigning world champion. So the question persists: What do? Let's highlight two innovations:
What's the T, Roboboy?
Self-localization on the field is one of the principal problems of robofootball If the NAO doesn't know where it is, there is not much that can come from that. And if the robot communicates the wrong position, the break-down in efficacy just cascades through the entire team-strategy. Our new solution: finding T-shaped line sections on the field to boost the network processing the camera images. Sounds easy, right? No? Well, matter of taste. Oh and that means of course that you need to differentiate different kinds of T-lines, light conditions change all the time so color is strongly relative, the resolution is not exactly full HD and the images are tiny. So I guess it's actually quite tricky, nevermind. Did I mention that you need a substantial amount of training data? But the idea is very promising and our Machine Learning expert Tobias reports great results so far, so that's something to be excited about! We'll report how it goes!
Beep Boop, Baby!
Another novelty is a true wild card - we've been working on a new communication protocol - using sound! This seemingly obvious choice for making yourself understood - humans have overall been relatively successful with that - comes however, with several caveats if you're talking robots. Whistles, referees, a rowdy crowd and a constant backdrop of chaotic noises from the robots themselves create a perfect storm of interference, so we had to get creative. The idea: if the interferences mainly consist of human-discriminable acoustic patterns - we need to pivot to physical properties that operate on an entirely different level: in chaotic interference, structured interference patterns are uniquely... unique. Spectacularly enough, quantitative musicology has quite a few things to say about that. Throw some symbolic communication strategies from theoretical linguistics into the mix, add a little dynamic data compression et voilá: Let's hope it works, fingers crossed! More updates to follow!
But wait, there's more!
As we get closer to the RoboCup, I'll post more about what we have been working on.
Up next: This year's technical challenge Shared Autonomy: 2 against 2, one team fully autonomous, one team half autonomous, half human-operated. Will the humans and robots really work together? What could go wrong? Who will tell science-fiction writers that we're really starting to catch up?
And it certainly was that - a long night! Even though technically only on Tokio time (2pm to 11pm german time), the (more faithfully translated) long night of computer games was a lot of fun! We set up a small piece of Green and had some robots run around - operatable via laptop. And of course, we never tired of repeating (gebetsmühlenartig, if you will) that during game play, the robots are fully autonomous. Unfortunately, we had so much fun, we just about forgot to take pictures of our own! Luckily, the HTWK PR team was well equipped to compensate for that!
But what did you just see there? A Green Screen? Indeed! We developed a new attraction where you can enter the world of our robots - even if just for 1 (one) frame - we're still working on the fully immersive implementation! What's more, we were spontaneously interviewed by TV people - live! in real time! Can you believe it? Picture this: Our attending professor Jens Wagner just walked up to one of our team members, quickly pulled him aside, murmured "TV! live! smile! improvise!" and seconds later - we were already on the air. But it all went well. I'll post the broadcast as soon as I figure out, where it actually aired - it all happened so quickly, but I guess that's showbiz, baby!
We're also very happy to welcome several new team members into our midst. They approached us during the event and by the publishing of this post (sorry for the delay!), they had already visited the lab on their own and started working on our introductory tasks. You, dear dedicated reader of this blog, are of course well aware - there is a lot to do, so we're happy about all the help we can get!
Here's the 2024 RoboCup German Open final - we worked hard and fought even harder, and the results are noteworthy - we now know what to do until the World Cup in July!
What do you think we should work on next? Let us know in the comments below!
Stay tuned for the release of the finale tomorrow. We played against B-Human and unfortunately lost 4-1. But hey, what was that? four to one (1)? Yes, we struck a goal and had 2 other major chances, but in the end it was just not enough. But does that mean we can turn the tides over the next three months? Only one way to find out, you know it!
We'll upload the final as soon as we can, we'll update you here, but in the meantime. Check out the entire German Open 2024 Playlist! [Link]
If playing against
the HULKs is establishing itself as a new ritual, we probably all
need a new cardiologist soon. Like in 2023, the game was full of
suspense, robot-battling robots, laughter, groaning, shouting (at
referees *cough) ... but goals, too? You will find out by watching the
video ;)
You can count on the HULKs to deliver a really worthwhile and entertaining spectacle when we're up against each other! They are a great team that, no doubt, plays at our level and would beat us if we don't pay attention. You can watch the
great development of our gameplay from 2008 till today - from
searching the ball for 10 minutes straight to dribbling and passing
across the whole field. With that, the matches mature and become more and more dynamic and
in our match against the HULKs, we depended on every last thing we ever developed. And yet - right up until the end, you can never be sure: Will it have been enough?
The news is out - last year's spectacular and nerve-racking semi final is bound to get a sequel!
Having fought our way through 5 group rounds, great ups and, well let's call them 'memorable' downs, we made the cut and the opponent du demain (well at least the first one, that is) could hardly be more thrilling and daunting at the same time: the HULKs from Hamburg. So we got our work cut out for us. We collected a whole lot of data with Eindhoven on our mind but that certainly doesn't mean that we're not going to try whatever is possible (and maybe even then some!) to win! If you, dear reader, can't remember the showdown battle royale of Bordeaux, check out the Youtube video I linked on the bottom of this post.
Living la Vida Loca
Well, it's a never ending story. In order to get where you want to go, you need to know were you are. Maybe even where you came from in the first place, but that's bonus information for reasonable people who have their life together and actually know how taxes work. For a robot, there are much more fundamental concerns:
When do I turn my head and how fast?
Where is the ball?
Where am I and if I'm not alone - how many of me are there?
Am I unique if and only if I occupy a unique agent state?
What is love?
Where is the ball?
Baby don't hurt me.
What is that line over there?
Where is the BALL?
We got into the finer details of localization logic. For instance, as I teased in the first blog post, we're now looking for the ball while getting up under external assumptions where the ball is most likely to be found. Robots that get a lot of action als tend to need a lot of time face down on the field - but falling can be messy and the NAO is not famous for its gracefully feline intuition. So what do? Well, in addition to our revised ball search after the fall, we've tweaked and calibrated various parameters when to - and crucially, when not to - look for the ball. A striker usually doesn't need to run all that quickly, as long as he's consistent; but more control could mean losing the ball less since dribbling would be more precise and we could avoid unnecessary ball-searches. A robot can spontaneously lose sight of the ball, and adjusting the window of blind trust can be pretty
The final match-up of the group phase put us up against the only non-European team that made its way all the way here to participate in the German Open! I'm of course talking about the Canadian team Naova from Montréal. Naova certainly had a good run this competition - even scoring a goal against the ironclad defenses of B-Human and almost wrangling the mighty HULKs. So there was certainly a sense of nervousness when the first half just wouldn't quite get going as we needed it to. There is no comfort in a 1:0 lead. Luckily, we were able to turn it around in the second half, but I won't give everything away.
As a bonus treat: our team member Felix and Adrian from R-ZWEI KICKERS are giving commentary and insider knowledge in German - you won't get sound like this in the live stream!
For this match we're facing B-Human against whom we've played so many times! Good thing that we just had a break by getting to skip round 4 via Wild Card. But don't worry, it wasn't realxing. More time is just more time to fix what can be fixed, improve what can be improved upon and leave alone what needs to be oh-my-god-don't-touch-it-it-works left alone. This time, however, it might seem like there could be light at the end of the tunnel? Are we getting closer to salvation or is it just a train speeding towards us? Let's us know what you think in the comments!
Some of our team members only know them from last year's RoboCup but they are a team with a great tradition. This year, they are back again and certainly a competitor not to be taken lightly
RoboCup season has begun and we're welcoming our new NAOs into our ranks: Curiosity, Dragonfly, Atlas, Hubble and Genesis joined us last year and made their HTWK Robots debut in Hamburg at the RoHow where we ceremoniously bestowed them with names and honors. In V6 tradition, they've all been named after spacecraft. But now it's time to take off the stabilizers and well, take off!
Lost In Translation?
Unfortunately, the inaugural game could have run a little smoother. In a flash of excitement, Hubble suddenly spent the the entire remaining communication budget in a matter of seconds - in minute 6 no less. Of the first half. Well, that hurt and there is certainly a parallel universe in which that didn't happen and we're all a little happier. But the Nao Devils delivered an astronomical performance in their own right!, although we managed to score the first goal, right after the disqualification was announced, the devil came down to Kassel and took the lead. And after that, well there was no coming back from that. Literally! Because once you exceed your communication budget, all your goals are immediately annulled and no further goals are counted. Could it have been a 3:1? Maybe, but we'll never know what would have happened had the things that did happen not happened. It happens! *Or what would have happened, if I wasn't trying to squeeze as many space references into this first part as possible - you know, like a black hole! But yeah, see for yourself:
Watch your step!
Being able to walk is nice and all - but wouldn't it be nice to als see where you're going? Well, we're doing that already but now we added a new dimension, while getting up, our NAOs stabilize in the final seconds, zeroing in on not falling back over (an infamous problem among virtually every time). But if a goalie get's up after diving in front of the ball, the ball is probably still right there in front of him! In the past, we had to discover that these were moments our oppents would readily exploit and we can't have that! So now not only does the NAO start looking while getting up, but he also starts where the ball is most likely to be! Sounds simple, but unsurprisingly, it has its pitfalls.
We know humanity's best friend but what does that mean for humanoid robots? Well you know where this is going! How cute are they together!
But the humans are also great, a robodog is just unfair competition. It's still wonderful, though, seeing everyone back in one place, hacking together, having fun, spending sleepless nights and just absorbing that community of passionate people!
With championship season fast approaching, we are getting ready to get back in the game. Check out our recent reel on instagram from our time at Spin2030. Stay tuned for more updates coming soon!
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