Outdoor main competition, drop-in player competition, and challenges:
Berlin United – NaoTH, B-Human, MRL-SPL, Nao Devils Dortmund, Nao-Team HTWK, NTU RoboPAL, TJArk, UNSW Australia
Alternate teams for the outdoor main competition:
1st Alternate: Northern Bites
2nd Alternate: SPQR
3rd Alternate: UPennalizers
Indoor main competition, drop-in player competition, and challenges:
Austrian Kangaroos, Bembelbots, Camellia Dragons, DAInamite, Dutch Nao Team, HULKs, Linkoping Humanoids, Northern Bites, Philosopher, RoboCanes, RoboEireann, SPQR, UChile Robotics Team, UPennalizers, UT Austin Villa, Z-Knipsers
Alternate teams for the indoor main competition:
1st Alternate: Team-NUST
2nd Alternate: Aztlan Team
Drop-in player competition and challenges:
Aztlan Team, CMSingle, AIM-HI Crude Scientists, Team-NUST, UnBeatables
International SPL 2016 Competitors
Note: The following listing is a work in progress, and should not be considered to be an extensive list of all qualified 2016 SPL teams. Team information is being posted as it is received from teams.
 Austrian Kangaroos |
 Austria Team Contact: Institutes: |
| Team Profile: | The Austrian Kangaroos are a team of volunteers, consisting of undergraduates, graduates, and researchers from Vienna University of Technology and University of Applied Sciences Technikum Vienna. The Kangaroos participated in RoboCup for the first time in Graz, 2009. Since then numerous students run through our robotic based education gaining experience in research and development within a challenging but entertaining environment. Parts of our professional research activities have been disseminated into other domains like the automotive industry and the game engineering business. |
| Research Topics: | Biomimetrics, safety and security, computational intelligence, computer vision |
| Competing in: | team competition, drop-in player competition, and technical challenges |
| Team Report: | Whistle Detector |
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 Aztlan |
 México Team Contact: Institutes: |
| Research Topics: | Robotic Vision, Localization, Motion Planning and Control |
| Team Report: | Available |
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 Berlin United – Nao Team Humboldt (BU-NaoTH) |
 Germany Team Contact: Institutes: |
| Team Profile: | Nao Team Humboldt (NaoTH) is part of the Adaptive Systems group at the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin and a member of the joint research group “Berlin United”, together with the RoboCup team FUmanoids (KidSize League) from the Freie Universität Berlin. Established at the end of 2007, NaoTH is the successor of the Aibo Team Humboldt (part of the former German Team). The team mainly consists of graduate and undergraduate students and is closely involved in the teaching process. In 2015 our team reached the quarterfinals in the main competition at the RoboCup world championship 2015 in Hefei, China and was selected as one of the top 5 players in the drop-in challenge which constituted the all-star team. At IranOpen and at German Open we won 3rd places. Our codebase is original and progressively developed over the years. It uses our own modular architecture and provides the basis for our research. Our research interests span the whole spectrum ranging from software architecture for autonomous robots, basic motion control, vision, perception, and modeling to high level planning. One of the most recent directions is simulation based decision making. |
| Research Topics: | Simulation Based Decision Making, Situation Modelling (self localization, local object modelling, semantic mapping), Attention Control, Dynamic Motion Control (walk, ball handling) |
| Competing in: | team competition, drop-in player competition, and technical challenges |
| Team Report: | Available |
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 B-Human |
Germany Team Contact: Institutes: |
| Team Profile: | B-Human consists of students from the University of Bremen in their advanced study period and researchers from the DFKI Bremen. In the past, members of the B-Human team participated in different RoboCup leagues. Since 2009, B-Human won every RoboCup German Open as well as the RoboCup World Championships 2009, 2010, 2011, and 2013. We also won the RoboCup Technical Challenges in 2009, 2013, 2014, and 2015 and the Drop-in Player competitions at the RoboCup German Open 2014 and 2015 and the RoboCup 2014. In addition, B-Human team members earned the Best Paper Award at the RoboCup Symposiums 2010 and 2013. In 2016, we intend to participate in the new RoboCup European Open and again in the RoboCup World Championship. |
| Research Topics: | Probabilistic state estimation, real-time computer vision, robot simulation, humanoid walking |
| Competing in: | team competition, drop-in player competition, and technical challenges |
| Team Report: | Available |
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 Camellia Dragons |
 Japan Team Contact: Institutes: |
| Team Profile: | Camellia Dragons was organized in October, 2013 at Aichi Prefectural University (APU), Japan. The team consists of five masters students, four undergraduate students, and two faculty members. All of them are affiliated with Intelligent Machine Learning laboratory (IML lab) at APU. The team made a debut at the SPL competition for RoboCup Japan Open 2014 and won the first place in the main competition. In 2015, we also participated in the SPL competition for RoboCup Japan Open 2015. As a result, we won the first place in the main competition in a row and also went to the top in the technical challenge. The team also challenged to RoboCup 2015 in Hefei, China and participated in the drop-in player competition and three technical challenges. |
| Research Topics: | Cooperative behavior, Dynamic role assignment, Rhythmic walking, Self-localization, Human-robot interaction. |
| Team Report: | Not available |
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| CMSingle |
 USA Team Contact: Institutes: |
| Team Profile: | Our team is participating in only the Drop-In portion of the competition. Currently our team consists of one first year robotics PhD? student, Devin Schwab, and his adviser Dr. Manuela Veloso. We are part of the CORAL lab at Carnegie Mellon University. This is our first year entering the Drop-In competition, and Devin’s first year entering any RoboCup competition. |
| Research Topics: | We are focusing on research on learning and adaptation in the context of ad-hoc teams. Specifically we are looking to solve issues in 3 major areas: Improving data efficiency of learning algorithms, Learning with ad-hoc teams, Transfer Learning |
| Team Report: | Not available |
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 DAInamite |
Germany Team Contact: Institutes: |
| Team Profile: | Team DAInamite is hosted at DAI-Lab (chair AOT at TU-Berlin) that aims to make results from artificial intelligence tangible and to apply and test them in real environments. The subject of robotic soccer is used in teaching to introduce students to real world applications and problems encountered in robotics. DAInamite has been active in the SPL since 2012, participating in a number of regional and international competitions. |
| Research Topics: | biped locomotion, automation, performance monitoring and adaptation |
| Team Report: | Not Available |
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 Dutch Nao Team |
 Netherlands Team Contact: Institutes: |
| Team Profile: | The Dutch Nao Team consists of bachelor and master students, supported by a senior staff-member. The team debuted at the German Open 2010 and made its breakthrough by qualifying for RoboCup Istanbul in 2011. After switching between several frameworks, we are developing our own code base this year. |
| Research Topics: | Computer vision, behaviour control, world modeling, probabilistic robotics, machine learning |
| Team Report: | Not Available |
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 HULKs – Hamburg Ultra Legendary Kickers |
Germany Team Contact: Institutes: |
| Team Profile: | The HULKs are a new team, that participates in the World Championship for the second time. Our team members are mostly undergraduate students. We have built our code base from scratch. |
| Research Topics: | Inter-Robot Communication via sound, Control Systems, Efficient Software Design and Debugging, Computer vision, Machine Learning |
| Team Report: | Not Available |
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 Linköping Humanoids |
 Sweden Team Contact: Institutes: |
| Team Profile: | Linköping Humanoids is a joint effort at Linköping university between the student association FIA Robotics, the Division for Artificial Intelligence and Integrated Computer Systems (AIICS) at the Department of Computer and Information Science (IDA) and the Computer Vision Laboratory (CVL) at the Department of Electrical Engineering (ISY). This is the second year we are participating in the SPL. |
| Research Topics: | AI, cognitive robotics, computer vision, multi-agent systems, machine learning, stream reasoning, and software development for autonomous systems |
| Team Report: | Not Available |
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 MRL-SPL |
 Iran Team Contact: Institutes: |
| Team Profile: | MRL-SPL team, under the supervision of Qazvin Azad University (QIAU), is one of the research groups of the Mechatronics Research Laboratory (MRL), dedicated to work in the field of biped robots. MRL’s presence in RoboCup different leagues since 2002. MRL SPL team has been an active participant of world RoboCup since 2009. The team has achieved three 1st place in RoboCup IranOpen and one 3rd place in RoboCup GermanOpen! |
| Research Topics: | Online Joint/Camera Calibration, Framework Development, Monte Carlo Self-Localization, Active Vision and Dynamic Head Motion, Computer Vision using Neural Network Learning Methods, Multi-Agent Cooperation and Coordination, Biped Walk, KinetoStatic and Dynamic Analysis, Ground Reference Points in Biped Locomotion, Off-Line and Online Walking Pattern Generation, Simplified Dynamic Models of a Biped Robot Considering the Dynamics of Upper Body. |
| Team Report: | Available |
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 Nao Devils Dortmund |
Germany Team Contact: Institutes: |
| Team Profile: | The team consists of researchers and students of TU Dortmund University. We participate in RoboCup competitions since 2002 with several different teams: Microsoft Hellhounds and as part of the German Team (4-Legged-League), DoHBots (Humanoid League), and BreDoBrothers (together with University Bremen) and now as Nao Devils Dortmund in the Standard Platform League. |
| Research Topics: | biped walking, computer vision, stochastic filtering, artificial intelligence |
| Team Report: | Available |
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 Nao-Team HTWK |
Germany Team Contact: Institutes: |
| Team Profile: | Nao-Team HTWK is a RoboCup team that consists of graduate and undergraduate students of Leipzig University of Applied Sciences and was founded in 2009. We have been continuously participating in the World Championship as well as local opens. We reached the semi finals for the last 5 consecutive RoboCups and achieved two 2nd and a 3rd place. |
| Research Topics: | machine learning, walking, image recognition, team strategies, localization |
| Team Report: | Available |
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Team Contact: Institutes: |
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 Northern Bites |
USA Team Contact: Institutes: |
| Team Profile: | Northern Bites are a team of undergraduates from Bowdoin College in the United States. We have participated in the SPL every year since 2006. We were world champions in 2007, finished second in 2009 and third in 2008. We have also hosted the U.S. Open each year since 2009. |
| Research Topics: | Machine Vision, Cognitive Robotics |
| Team Report: | Not available |
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 NTU RoboPAL |
 Taiwan Team Contact: Institutes: |
| Team Profile: | The team consists of graduate and undergraduate students highly interested in solving real-world multirobot research issues in terms of perception, behavior, and motion. Started from 2009, NTU RoboPAL? participated in RoboCup SPL and made it to the quarter-finals in 2009, 2014, and 2015 and won the third place in 2011. |
| Research Topics: | Multi-robot localization and tracking, multi-robot cooperative perception, motion planning, multi-robot navigation, and multi-robot cooperation |
| Team Report: | Available |
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 Philosopher |
 Estonia Team Contact: Institutes: |
| Team Profile: | Team Philosopher was established in 2013 at the University of Tartu (UT), Estonia. In the year of 2014 team attended it’s first RoboCup competition in Brazil. In the next year of 2015 the team attended RoboCup competition in China, where team’s performance has shown improvement compared with the results of the first year in both team and drop-in competitions. |
| Research Topics: | vision system, localization and odometry, edge based object detection, game strategy and wireless communication, motion and kick engine |
| Team Report: | Not Available |
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 RoboCanes |
USA Team Contact: Institutes: |
| Team Profile: | The Team consists of graduate students of the AI, Games & Robotics LAB. RoboCanes participated in RoboCup since 2010 in the 3D Soccer Simulation League and reached 2nd places in the 2012 and 2014 World Cup, won the German Open 2011 and was runner-up at the Iran Open 2012. We participated in the SPL since 2012 and won the US Open in 2015. |
| Research Topics: | Learnable knowledge representation, biped walking control, multi-agent cooperation and communication, self-localization, parameter optimization, reinforcement learning. |
| Team Report: | Not Available |
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 RoboEireann |
 Ireland Team Contact: Institutes: |
| Team Profile: | RoboEireann is Ireland’s only SPL team and comprises students and staff from the Maynooth University Electronic Engineering and Computer Science departments. In previous competitions we have attained 1st place in RoboCup 2008 as part of NUManoids (a joint effort with Newcastle University, Australia), 1st place in RoboCup 2011 Technical Challenge, 2nd place in the 2012 German Open, and the quarter-finals of RoboCup 2013. |
| Research Topics: | Computer vision, robust localization, multi-agent behaviour, closed-loop kinematics |
| Team Report: | Available |
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 SPQR Team |
 Italy Team Contact: |
| Team Profile: | SPQR Team is the RoboCup team of the Department of Computer, Control and Managemente engineering “Antonio Ruberti” at La Sapienza University of Rome. Our team participate in RoboCup competitions since 1998 in different leagues: Middle-size(1998-2002), Four-legged(2000-2007), Real-Rescue(2003-2006), @Home (2006), Virtual-Rescue(2006-2008), Standard Platform League since 2008. During 2013 we won the first place at the Iran Open, and the third place at the German Open. |
| Research Topics: | Our research topics are in multi-robot coordination, multi-object tracking and self localization, computer vision. |
| Team Report: | Available |
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 Team-NUST |
 Pakistan Team Contact: Institutes: |
| Team Profile: | Team-NUST was established formally in 2013 in the Legged Robotics Group of RISE Research Center, SMME, NUST, Pakistan with the aim of carrying out research in the rapidly progressing field of humanoid robotics, artificial intelligence, machine vision, motion planning, kinematics and navigation; with the motivation to participate in RoboCup Standard Platform League and make some contribution to the research community.# |
| Research Topics: | Robust and predictable kicking motion, multi-objective behavior coordination, multi-agent behavior based distributed architecture, motion planning, localization and mapping |
| Team Report: | Available |
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 TJArk |
 China Team Contact: Institutes: |
| Team Profile: | TJArk was established in 2004 as a part of the Lab of Robot and Intelligent Control of Tongji University in China. The team consists graduates and undergraduates. All the members of this team are from Control Science and Control Engineering Department. The TJArk participated in the RoboCup SPL competition from 2006 through 2015. We entered the quarter finals in RoboCup 2007 and RoboCup 2008, and Play-In Round in RoboCup2014. We are the SPL Champion in RoboCup China Open in latest 3 years. In 2016, we intend to participate in the RoboCup World Championship and RoboCup China Open. |
| Research Topics: | Pattern Recogition, Machine Learning, Computer Vision, Motion Control of Biped Robot, Multi-agent Systems |
| Team Report: | Not available |
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 UChile Robotics Team |
 Chile Team Contact: Institutes: |
| Team Profile: | The UChile robotics team is an effort of the Department of Electrical Engineering of the Universidad de Chile in order to foster research in mobile robotics. The team is involved in RoboCup competitions since 2003 in different leagues: Four-legged 2003-2007, Humanoid in 2007-2010, and Standard Platform League from 2008. |
| Research Topics: | Mobile robotics and computer vision: self localization, perception, navigation, biped locomotion, learning and mobile robot simulation. |
| Competing in: | team competition, drop-in player competition, and technical challenges |
| Team Report: | Not available |
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 UnBeatables |
 Brazil Team Contact: Institutes: |
| Team Profile: | Created in 2014 and affiliated with the University of Brasilia, UnBeatables is the only Brazilian team that has ever participated in the Standard Platform division of the Robocup. Composed of mostly graduation students we have achieved many titles since we started, mainly the Drop-in only championship at the RoboCup 2014 in Joao Pessoa, Brazil and at RoboCup 2015 in Hefei, China. Also, we have two first place titles for the robot soccer category at the Latin American Robotics Competition (LARC) . This year we hope to do our best at the RoboCup 2016 and keep up with the good results! |
| Research Topics: | ? Computer Vision ? Motion Control ? Human-Robot Interaction ? Mapping and Localization |
| Competing in: | team competition, drop-in player competition, and technical challenges |
| Team Report: | Not available |
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 UNSW Australia |
 Australia Team Contact: Institutes: |
| Team Profile: | UNSW Australia is the UNSW Australia’s team in the RoboCup SPL. The team is mostly made up of undergraduate students from the School of Computer Science and Engineering, with some postgraduate and alumni members. Undergraduate students are often enrolled in an Honours thesis or Special Project course as part of their studies. |
| Research Topics: | Autonomous Systems is a priority research topic in robotics at CSE, UNSW. Our general research focus, of which the RoboCup SPL is a part, is to: ? further develop reasoning methods that incorporate uncertainty and real-time constraints and that integrate with the statistical methods used in SLAM and perception ? develop methods for using estimates of uncertainty to guide future decision making so as to reduce the uncertainty ? extend these methods for multi-robot cooperation ? use symbolic representations as the basis for human-robot interaction ? develop learning algorithms for hybrid systems, such as using knowledge of logical constraints to restrict the search of a trial-and-error learner and learning the constraints ? develop high level symbolic robotic languages that provide abstractions for a large range of deliberation, planning and learning techniques so as to simplify robot programming |
| Competing in: | team competition, drop-in player competition, and technical challenges |
| Team Report: | Available |
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 UPennalizers |
USA Team Contact: Institutes: |
| Team Profile: | The UPennalizers consists of graduate and undergraduate students from the University of Pennsylvania and is led by Dr.Daniel Lee of the GRASP Lab. Our team participated in the RoboCup SPL international competitions from 1999 through 2005 and returned in 2009. In U.S, we participated in the RoboCup U.S Open and won the championships in 2013 and 2014. The lab also has a team involving in the RoboCup Humanoid League. |
| Research Topics: | Computer vision, self-localization, path planning and obstacle avoidance, feedback based walk/motion engine, multi-robot coordination |
| Team Report: | Available |
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 UT Austin Villa |
 USA Team Contact: Institutes: |
| Team Profile: | Our team is from the University of Texas at Austin. We participated in the Aibo league starting in 2003 and started with the Naos in 2007. We also field teams in the RoboCup 2D and 3D simulation leagues. We won the 2009, 2010, and 2012 SPL US Opens. At the international RoboCup SPL competitions, we made the quarterfinals in 2009, won 3rd place in 2010 and 2013, and won the championship in 2012. |
| Research Topics: | Self localization, vision algorithms, multi-agent task allocation, obstacle avoidance, reinforcement learning, ad hoc teamwork |
| Team Report: | Not available |
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