Over five months have passed since RoboCup 2013. We hope you had a great time!

We want to share some interesting figures with you (the full report can be found here)

• Over 40,000 people visited the tournament. Among them was queen Máxima of the Netherlands.
• Exactly 112 journalists from 22 countries attended RoboCup 2013. They generated press coverage in 75 countries and by the world’s most well-known media and news-agencies, including BBC, AP, The Guardian, AFP, NBC and Reuters. The estimated number of people reached through media: 11 million in the Netherlands and at least 50 million worldwide.
• We had over 60,000 individual viewers of RoboCup TV and 80,000 visitors to the RoboCup website.
• Over 75 million tweets were posted about RoboCup 2013.
• In total we had 2661 participants from 45 countries.

Some of you have asked where to find photos and videos. Therefore we would like to send you this collection of links:

• Photographer Albert van Breemen made a beautiful photo book of which hard-copies can be ordered here. The images from this book, and many other high-resolution images, can be downloaded from the RoboCup 2013 Flickr page. All content is free to use, but please add a reference to the name of the photographer (either Bart van Overbeeke or Albert van Breemen).
• As a local organizing committee we’ve also made a photo book of our own, digitally available here.

Day by day videos compilations were made by TU/e’s ‘innovation lab’:

• Day 1: Major – Junior
• Day 2: Major – Junior
• Day 3: Major
• Day 4: Major

They also made league by league compilations: Middle-Size, Small-Size, Standard-Platform and Humanoid Leagues, RoboCup@Home, RoboCup Rescue, RoboCup@Work and Festo Logistics League

All of the league compilations are put together in this video. A compilation of the Junior Finals can be found here. We would also like to point you at the videos by BotSport TV, mainly focusing on the humanoid leagues.

The full RoboCup TV broadcast of the MSL final match can be found here. Make sure you’ve seen the goal at 0:46:25! The full broadcasts of the other finals can be found here: Festo Logistics League, Humanoid Adult-Size League, Humanoid Teen-Size League, Humanoid Kid-Size League, Standard Platform League and RoboCup@Work, Small-Size League Part 1 and Part 2

Finally we would like to thank everybody for making RoboCup 2013 an unforgettable experience; we hope to meet you again in Brazil at RoboCup2014!

Best regards,

RoboCup 2013 Local Organizing Committee

“With this photo book I hope to have captured the beauty and spirit of the RoboCup 2013 event. For those who were present this book will bring back good memories. For those who were not, it will facinate you.” Albert van Breemen, 2013

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=kHb464peuBk

The matches in the Teen Size League are played between two teams, each with two robots. The humanoid robots have arms and legs, and are between 90 and 120 centimeters tall. If they fall over they can stand up again without assistance.

In the first half the German robots played a more aggressive game than their Japanese opponents. Making matters worse were the problems with the Japanese robots, which regularly fell over and had difficulty in standing up again. That meant the robots had to be taken off the field, which gave the German team plenty of opportunities to score. Which is exactly what they did – by half-time the score was already 3-0.

But as the end of the match approached, the German robots also had some technical problems. So when both the Japanese and German teams each had one of their robots on the sidelines, that gave Japan a great chance to get back on equal terms. With the German team reduced to half-strength, it looked as though the Japanese robot would be shooting at an open goal – but the one remaining German robot was just able to block the shot in time. After which it immediately put the ball into the undefended Japanese goal with a shot that was exactly hard enough.

Finally the German team got the chance to finish the game with a 5-0 score. The only Japanese robot had fallen over, while the Germans had by then brought their second player back onto the field. With no Japanese robot on the field and the ball no more than a meter in front of the Japanese goal, the Germans just missed scoring one more time. Just when it was about to take that final shot, their robot fell over.

But that didn’t change the verdict – their 4-0 lead wasn’t threatened.

The Humanoid League is a contest between ‘human-like’ robots with arms and legs. In de Adult Size League, one robot first takes the penalty shots and then plays in goal when it’s the opposing side’s turn to shoot. The ball is placed behind the robot, which then has to recognize and locate it. Adult Size are the biggest robots in the Humanoid League: they have to be at least 130 centimeters tall.

The Adult Size final saw JoiTech from Japan take an early lead, when their robot managed to stop a penalty shot by their opponents from Taiwan who had beaten Tech United in the semi-final. But then JoiTech’s robot couldn’t find the ball when it was his turn to take a penalty shot, making the score even again. However the Japanese team went back into the lead when the next shot by the Taiwan team’s robot hit the goalpost. So at the end of the match the winners were the JoiTech team from Japan, giving them the World Champions title for the coming year!

The match was kicked off by Rob van Gijzel, the mayor of Eindhoven. A short way into the first half of the game, Tech United received their first counter-goal of the tournament. Just before the end of the first half, they managed to come back: 1-1. The audience went wild, along with the Turtle mascot who danced and jumped around.

Shortly after the start of the second half, Water returned with another shot straight at the goal – the Tech United goalie was too late to stop it, and the standings were 2-1 for the Chinese team. The match remained nerve-wracking, especially for the (human) Tech United supporters. Although there were some nice passes as well as several more scoring opportunities for the Dutch team, team Water was very strong in the defense.

But then one of the Tech United TURTLEs presented a big surprise: in the last few seconds before the end signal, another goal made the standings 2-2! After a short discussion between the referees, it was decided to prolong the game by two times 5 minutes. During the first prolongation, Water scored again. The second 5 minutes went by without any more goals; Water defeated Tech United with 3-2. Team Water now has the honour of playing a demonstration game against a human team.

Although last year’s world champions were disappointed, the second place is of course a wonderful achievement. And there was more success for Tech United today: the RoboCup@Home team won 3^rd place in their league with robot AMIGO.

Tech United has another final to play in the @Home League: robot AMIGO will perform in the final challenge today at 12PM and is currently in the 3^rd position. Apart from AMIGO, the care robot from team BORG from Groningen also appears in the final challenge; at this moment, team BORG is in 4^th place.

In the Rescue League, the robots enter hard-to-access buildings to find victims and transmit their locations to the base station. A twin brother of one of the robots was used after the Fukushima nuclear disaster. It entered areas that were too hazardous for people, where it had to carry out measurements to help decide whether the area was safe for people to enter.

Besides, Lieven and Guy will look forward to Sunday, when the deciding games will be played. Tech United is one of the most likely winners in the Middle Size League. The Dutch team didn’t lose a match during this tournament and until today no team succeeded to score against Tech United.

Today @RoboCup will be broadcasted at 21h Central European Time on RoboCuptv. Take a look at the Friday’s broadcast below or all RoboCup’s videos on YouTube.

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=-kM-M5g-DZM

Quince stars in the Rescue League, in which the robots enter hard-to-access buildings to find ‘victims’ and transmit their locations to the base station. But in Fukushima the robot had a very different task: he had to carry out measurements to help decide whether the area was safe for people to enter.

The old version of Quince had a few limitations. For example team captain Sotoshi Tedokoro was worried that that the robot might fall when it had to climb the steep stairs in the building. That’s why Quince has now been improved: his twin bother is better at climbing up steep surfaces, and he also has some new sensors that carry out vital measurements.

Based on the resulting data rescuers can decide whether people can enter the area, how long they’re allowed to stay there and if they need to take any special measures. Which means the information can literally save lives. Quince’s twin brother has now gone into action successfully ten times since June 2011.

RoboCup has made a big contribution to Quince, says team captain Tedokoro. “The robot is based entirely on what we’ve learned in the competition. It’s given us the chance to test Quince in action, and to make further improvements.”

Take a look at the pictures below made by the robot in Fukushima.

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=d2XMU7dptpw

On Wednesday many of the teams in the Middle Size League might well have looked with envy at the German team. They came up with a smart new idea in the scientific challenge, in which the teams show their latest ideas to improve the robots.

Most robots in the Middle Size League use a camera that looks upwards at a convex mirror, which gives them a 360 degree all-round view. But the German team came up with something smarter: the camera itself is located inside a concave mirror, where it receives the reflected view from the upper camera. That gives the robot two simultaneous information flows, on the basis of which it can construct a 3D image. In practice that means the robots are better at tracking the ball.

Yes, two members of the Eindhoven team Tech United confirm, there’s a good chance that they’ll also use this technique in the near future. Because when a promising new finding shows up, the other teams start to read the published papers about it and try to find the best way to integrate it in their own robots.

We saw a similar development in the Middle Size League with the rollers used to control the ball. The teams that started to use this technique had a big advantage: their robots had more secure control of the ball, and were also able to travel backwards with the ball.

Learning also takes place between the different classes. For example Tech United’s service robot used the same platform as the team’s soccer robots. And the Kinect motion-sensing device, which is used in some game computers, also made its appearance in several different leagues.

Copying other teams’ technologies may look a bit like cheating, but the aim of RoboCup is to accelerate the speed of development in robotics. And those developments will be faster if everyone can always start at the same level.

Competitors in the @Home League even think the teams don’t copy enough from each other. Janno Lunenburg, @Home team leader from Eindhoven’s Tech United, says the scientific challenge doesn’t produce enough innovations, even though the most successful robots look suspiciously alike. “There isn’t as much technology transfer as we’d like to see”, says Lunenburg. “Many teams are now using the Robot Operating System. And if all the teams have comparable systems we hope that will happen a lot more.”