In Russia, the hot phase for the remaining teams of flesh and blood is starting, while the winners of the World Cup of football robots have already been determined. The team B-Human of the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI) and the University of Bremen, sponsored by CONTACT Software, is again at the forefront.
With CONTACT's support, 15 students and their academic supporters travelled to Montreal, Canada. B-Human first won the penalty shoot-out in the "Technical Challenge" and the "Mixed Team Competition".
In the end, the six-time world champion of the Standard Platform League had a heartbeat final with the Leipzig HTWK team. It was a top-class exchange of blows open to the end, with only one goal finally scored - for Leipzig.
New rules of the game
In the Standard Platform League, five NAO robots from Softbank Robotics each with the same hardware but different software play against each other on an artificial turf pitch. "The key to success is how quickly a team reacts to new rules," says Roland Drewinski, Member of the Management Board of CONTACT Software. "B-Human is doing a great job."
In 2018, not only the introduction of free kicks and goalkeeper kicks has significantly increased the demands on the teams. Fouls are punished more severely by increasing the duration of time penalties with each additional one. Above all, communication between the robots must now be much more compact because the available WLAN bandwidth has been reduced by almost two thirds.
Success with Deep Learning
This year, B-Human is increasingly focusing on deep learning using neural networks. At the RoboCup German Open in spring, the team recorded and analyzed extensive data to improve various aspects of the system. The RoboCup World Championship ends every year with an international symposium at which the participants discuss scientific and technical progress in robotics and AI. The next tournament will be held in Sydney in 2019.
