#RoboCup2024 – each day digest: 21 July

A break in play throughout a Small Dimension League match.

Right now, 21 July, noticed the competitions draw to an in depth in an exciting finale. Within the third and last of our round-up articles, we offer a flavour of the motion from this final day. In the event you missed them, you’ll find our first two digests right here: 19 July | 20 July.

My first port of name this morning was the Normal Platform League, the place Dr Timothy Wiley and Tom Ellis from Staff RedbackBots, RMIT College, Melbourne, Australia, demonstrated an thrilling development that’s distinctive to their workforce. They’ve developed an augmented actuality (AR) system with the goal of enhancing the understanding and explainability of the on-field motion.

The RedbackBots travelling workforce for 2024 (L-to-R: Murray Owens, Sam Griffiths, Tom Ellis, Dr Timothy Wiley, Mark Area, Jasper Avice Demay). Picture credit score: Dr Timothy Wiley.

Timothy, the tutorial chief of the workforce defined: “What our college students proposed on the finish of final yr’s competitors, to make a contribution to the league, was to develop an augmented actuality (AR) visualization of what the league calls the workforce communication monitor. It is a piece of software program that will get displayed on the TV screens to the viewers and the referee, and it exhibits you the place the robots suppose they’re, details about the sport, and the place the ball is. We got down to make an AR system of this as a result of we expect it’s so significantly better to view it overlaid on the sector. What the AR lets us do is venture all of this info stay on the sector because the robots are transferring.”

The workforce has been demonstrating the system to the league on the occasion, with very optimistic suggestions. In reality, one of many groups discovered an error of their software program throughout a recreation while attempting out the AR system. Tom mentioned that they’ve acquired numerous concepts and strategies from the opposite groups for additional developments. This is without doubt one of the first (if not, the primary) AR system to be trialled throughout the competitors, and first time it has been used within the Normal Platform League. I used to be fortunate sufficient to get a demo from Tom and it positively added a brand new stage to the viewing expertise. It is going to be very fascinating to see how the system evolves.

Mark Area organising the MetaQuest3 to make use of the augmented actuality system. Picture credit score: Dr Timothy Wiley.

From the primary soccer space I headed to the RoboCupJunior zone, the place Rui Baptista, an Govt Committee member, gave me a tour of the arenas and launched me to among the groups which were utilizing machine studying fashions to help their robots. RoboCupJunior is a contest for varsity youngsters, and is break up into three leagues: Soccer, Rescue and OnStage.

I first caught up with 4 groups from the Rescue league. Robots establish “victims” inside re-created catastrophe eventualities, various in complexity from line-following on a flat floor to negotiating paths via obstacles on uneven terrain. There are three totally different strands to the league: 1) Rescue Line, the place robots comply with a black line which leads them to a sufferer, 2) Rescue Maze, the place robots want to analyze a maze and establish victims, 3) Rescue Simulation, which is a simulated model of the maze competitors.

Staff Skollska Knijgia, collaborating within the Rescue Line, used a YOLO v8 neural community to detect victims within the evacuation zone. They skilled the community themselves with about 5000 photos. Additionally competing within the Rescue Line occasion had been Staff Overengeniering2. In addition they used YOLO v8 neural networks, on this case for 2 components of their system. They used the primary mannequin to detect victims within the evacuation zone and to detect the partitions. Their second mannequin is utilized throughout line following, and permits the robotic to detect when the black line (used for almost all of the duty) modifications to a silver line, which signifies the doorway of the evacuation zone.

Left: Staff Skollska Knijgia. Proper: Staff Overengeniering2.

Staff Tanorobo! had been collaborating within the maze competitors. In addition they used a machine studying mannequin for sufferer detection, coaching on 3000 pictures for every kind of sufferer (these are denoted by totally different letters within the maze). In addition they took pictures of partitions and obstacles, to keep away from mis-classification. Staff New Aje had been collaborating within the simulation contest. They used a graphical person interface to coach their machine studying mannequin, and to debug their navigation algorithms. They’ve three totally different algorithms for navigation, with various computational value, which they will change between relying on the place (and complexity) within the maze during which they’re situated.

Left: Staff Tanorobo! Proper: Staff New Aje.

I met two of the groups who had lately offered within the OnStage occasion. Staff Medic’s efficiency was based mostly on a medical situation, with the workforce together with two machine studying components. The primary being voice recognition, for communication with the “affected person” robots, and the second being picture recognition to categorise x-rays. Staff Jam Session’s robotic reads in American signal language symbols and makes use of them to play a piano. They used the MediaPipe detection algorithm to seek out totally different factors on the hand, and random forest classifiers to find out which image was being displayed.

Left: Staff Medic Bot Proper: Staff Jam Session.

Subsequent cease was the humanoid league the place the ultimate match was in progress. The sector was packed to the rafters with crowds desirous to see the motion.
Standing room solely to see the Grownup Dimension Humanoids.

The finals continued with the Center Dimension League, with the house workforce Tech United Eindhoven beating BigHeroX by a convincing 6-1 scoreline. You possibly can watch the livestream of the ultimate day’s motion right here.

The grand finale featured the winners of the Center Dimension League (Tech United Eindhoven) in opposition to 5 RoboCup trustees. The people ran out 5-2 winners, their superior passing and motion an excessive amount of for Tech United.