#RoboCup2024 – every day digest: 21 July

A break in play throughout a Small Dimension League match.

Right now, 21 July, noticed the competitions draw to a detailed in an exhilarating finale. Within the third and ultimate of our round-up articles, we offer a flavour of the motion from this final day. In the event 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 Crew RedbackBots, RMIT College, Melbourne, Australia, demonstrated an thrilling development that’s distinctive to their staff. They’ve developed an augmented actuality (AR) system with the purpose of enhancing the understanding and explainability of the on-field motion.

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

Timothy, the educational chief of the staff 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 staff 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 reveals 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 a lot better to view it overlaid on the sphere. What the AR lets us do is undertaking all of this data reside on the sphere because the robots are transferring.”

The staff has been demonstrating the system to the league on the occasion, with very constructive suggestions. Actually, one of many groups discovered an error of their software program throughout a sport while making an attempt out the AR system. Tom stated that they’ve acquired loads of concepts and options from the opposite groups for additional developments. This is likely 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 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. It is going to be very fascinating to see how the system evolves.

Mark Discipline establishing 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 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 college 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 situations, various in complexity from line-following on a flat floor to negotiating paths by way of obstacles on uneven terrain. There are three completely 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 research a maze and determine victims, 3) Rescue Simulation, which is a simulated model of the maze competitors.

Crew 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 Crew Overengeniering2. Additionally 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: Crew Skollska Knijgia. Proper: Crew Overengeniering2.

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

Left: Crew Tanorobo! Proper: Crew New Aje.

I met two of the groups who had lately introduced within the OnStage occasion. Crew Medic’s efficiency was based mostly on a medical state of affairs, with the staff 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. Crew 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 completely different factors on the hand, and random forest classifiers to find out which image was being displayed.

Left: Crew Medic Bot Proper: Crew Jam Session.

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

The finals continued with the Center Dimension League, with the house staff Tech United Eindhoven beating BigHeroX by a convincing 6-1 scoreline. You’ll be able to 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.