#RoboCup2024 – each day digest: 21 July

A break in play throughout a Small Measurement League match.

Immediately, 21 July, noticed the competitions draw to a detailed in an exhilarating finale. Within the third and remaining of our round-up articles, we offer a flavour of the motion from this final day. In case you missed them, you will discover our first two digests right here: 19 July | 20 July.

My first port of name this morning was the Customary Platform League, the place Dr Timothy Wiley and Tom Ellis from Workforce RedbackBots, RMIT College, Melbourne, Australia, demonstrated an thrilling development that’s distinctive to their group. 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 group for 2024 (L-to-R: Murray Owens, Sam Griffiths, Tom Ellis, Dr Timothy Wiley, Mark Subject, Jasper Avice Demay). Picture credit score: Dr Timothy Wiley.

Timothy, the educational chief of the group defined: “What our college students proposed on the finish of final 12 months’s competitors, to make a contribution to the league, was to develop an augmented actuality (AR) visualization of what the league calls the group communication monitor. This can be 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 assume 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 a lot better to view it overlaid on the sphere. What the AR lets us do is challenge all of this info reside on the sphere because the robots are shifting.”

The group has been demonstrating the system to the league on the occasion, with very constructive suggestions. In actual fact, one of many groups discovered an error of their software program throughout a sport while making an attempt out the AR system. Tom mentioned that they’ve obtained quite a lot of concepts and strategies from the opposite groups for additional developments. This is among the first (if not, the primary) AR system to be trialled throughout the competitors, and first time it has been used within the Customary 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. Will probably be very attention-grabbing to see how the system evolves.

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

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

I first caught up with 4 groups from the Rescue league. Robots determine “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 determine victims, 3) Rescue Simulation, which is a simulated model of the maze competitors.

Workforce Skollska Knijgia, participating within the Rescue Line, used a YOLO v8 neural community to detect victims within the evacuation zone. They educated the community themselves with about 5000 pictures. Additionally competing within the Rescue Line occasion had been Workforce 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) adjustments to a silver line, which signifies the doorway of the evacuation zone.

Left: Workforce Skollska Knijgia. Proper: Workforce Overengeniering2.

Workforce Tanorobo! had been participating 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. Workforce New Aje had been participating 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 price, which they’ll change between relying on the place (and complexity) within the maze during which they’re positioned.

Left: Workforce Tanorobo! Proper: Workforce New Aje.

I met two of the groups who had lately offered within the OnStage occasion. Workforce Medic’s efficiency was primarily based on a medical situation, with the group 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. Workforce 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: Workforce Medic Bot Proper: Workforce 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 desperate to see the motion.
Standing room solely to see the Grownup Measurement Humanoids.

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

The grand finale featured the winners of the Center Measurement 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.