RoboCup 2016 Humanoid TeenSize Winner NimbRo: Robust Visual Perception and Soccer Behaviors

Abstract

The trend in the RoboCup Humanoid League rules over the past few years has been towards a more realistic and challenging game environment. Elementary skills such as visual perception and walking, which had become mature enough for exciting gameplay, are now once again core challenges. The field goals are both white, and the walking surface is artificial grass, which constitutes a much more irregular surface than the carpet used before. In this paper, team NimbRo TeenSize, the winner of the TeenSize class of the RoboCup 2016 Humanoid League, presents its robotic platforms, the adaptations that had to be made to them, and the newest developments in visual perception and soccer behaviour.

NimbRo Robots Winning RoboCup 2018 Humanoid AdultSize Soccer Competitions

“…The complete perception pipeline including a forward-pass of the network takes approximately 20 ms on the robot hardware. Localization and Breaking the Symmetry: Our localization method relies on having a source of global yaw rotation of the robot [19]. Instead of a compass, we use integrated gyroscope measurements as the source of yaw orientation.…”

Grown-Up NimbRo Robots Winning RoboCup 2017 Humanoid AdultSize Soccer Competitions

“…To comply with the AdultSize class rules, our robot was extended to be 131 cm tall and 10.1 kg in weight. The upgrade of Copedo was based on another one of our robots-Dynaped, as it was upgraded in 2016 [4]. Copedo has been fitted with new electronics and onboard PC to use our open source ROS-based framework just like Dynaped, and our other robots.…”

“…To comply with the AdultSize class rules, our robot was extended to be 131 cm tall and 10.1 kg in weight. The upgrade of Copedo was based on another one of our robots-Dynaped, as it was upgraded in 2016 [4].…”

“…In 2017, for the first time, AdultSize class robots were playing one vs. one matches, which meant bringing the soccer game to a larger scale, along with all of its inherent difficulties. In previous years, our team NimbRo has competed in the Humanoid League within the KidSize, and more recently, the TeenSize classes [1,2,3,4].…”

RoboCup 2017: Robot World Cup XXI

“…In a match during the competition, the robot might fall even with a robust and fine-tuned gait. The actions of our opponent can lead to difficult situations as happened in RoboCup 2016 [12]. This implies that the robot needs to know how to land.…”