The RoboCup is an international initiative to promote research in the fields of artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics. Scientists and students from all over the world compete in football with their self-programmed robots to determine the best teams in each league. Thanks to its new main sponsor CONTACT Software, B-Human was able to travel to Japan for the 2017 Robot Soccer World Cup and successfully defended its World Championship title with a triple victory.

“The RoboCup is a great platform to inspire students for robotics and AI and to gain new research findings," says Dr. Roland Drewinski, head of CONTACT marketing. "This know-how is in great demand in industry, for example, to promote autonomous driving or the intelligent factory."

                                                     
               _{Full concentration on the mission of defending the title at the RoboCup World Championship 2017 in Nagoya, Japan (pictures: B-Human)}
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B-Human is a cooperation between the research area "Cyber Physical Systems" at DFKI and the Computer Science Department of the University of Bremen. The Bremen-based RoboCup team is competing in the "Standard Platform League" and is top here: for the sixth time world champion, nine-time German and European champion.

In order to teach robots how to manipulate the ball, the visual perception of the game situation, the coordination of team play and much more, numerous questions have to be answered during programming. The B-Human software currently consists of more than 100 modules developed in C++, and is constantly optimizing by the computer scientists. “The competitions are a great incentive for everyone to keep up with the best in AI and robotics worldwide," says Dr. Tim Laue from the University of Bremen.

Laue, a specialist for multisensory interactive systems, supervises the courses together with Dr. Thomas Röfer from DFKI. “We are pleased that CONTACT Software supports B-Human ", emphasizes the scientist. Thanks to its sponsors, the team from Bremen can participate in the competitions and invest in new technologies. “The partnership with CONTACT also offers our students and graduates interesting job prospects," says Laue.