Qualification Decisions for the International SPL 2016


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:
Dietmar Schreiner, Alexander Hofmann

Institutes:
Vienna University of Technology – Compilers and Languages Group
University of Applied Sciences Technikum Vienna

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


Aztlan


México

Team Contact:
Alberto Petrilli, Marco Morales, Jean-Bernard Hayet, Claudia Esteves, Héctor Becerra, Humberto Sossa

Institutes:
Universidad Autónoma de Carmen (UNACAR)
Department of Digital Systems, Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México (ITAM)
Computer Science Group, Centro de Investigación en Matemáticas A.C. (CIMAT)
Department of Mathematics, Universidad de Guanajuato (DEMAT-UG)
Centro de Investigación en Computación, Instituto Politécnico Nacional (CIC-IPN)

Research Topics: Robotic Vision, Localization, Motion Planning and Control
Team Report: Available


Berlin United – Nao Team Humboldt (BU-NaoTH)


Germany

Team Contact:
Heinrich Mellmann

Institutes:
Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin

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


B-Human


Germany

Team Contact:
Thomas Roefer, Tim Laue

Institutes:
DFKI Bremen, Cyber-Physical Systems
University of Bremen, Department of Computer Science

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


Camellia Dragons


Japan

Team Contact:
Toshiyuki Tanaka, Kunikazu Kobayashi

Institutes:
Aichi Prefectural University

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

CMSingle


USA

Team Contact:
Devin Schwab

Institutes:
Carnegie Mellon University

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


DAInamite


Germany

Team Contact:
Martin Berger

Institutes:
Technische Universität Berlin
DAI-Labor

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


Dutch Nao Team


Netherlands

Team Contact:
Patrick de Kok, Sébastien Negrijn

Institutes:
Universiteit van Amsterdam, Faculty of Science, Informatics Institute
Maastricht University, Department of Knowledge Engineering

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


HULKs – Hamburg Ultra Legendary Kickers


Germany

Team Contact:
Patrick Göttsch

Institutes:
Hamburg University of Technology

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


Linköping Humanoids


Sweden

Team Contact:
Fredrik Heintz

Institutes:
Departments of Computer Science
Departments of Electrical Engineering
Linköping University

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


MRL-SPL


Iran

Team Contact:
Aref Moqadam, Mohammad Ali Sharpasand

Institutes:
Qazvin Azad University

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


Nao Devils Dortmund


Germany

Team Contact:
Oliver Urbann, Ingmar Schwarz, Matthias Hofmann

Institutes:
Robotics Research Institute, TU Dortmund University

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


Nao-Team HTWK


Germany

Team Contact:
Rico Tilgner

Institutes:
Faculty of Computer Science, Mathematics and Natural Sciences, Leipzig University of Applied Sciences

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

Team Contact:

Institutes:



Northern Bites


USA

Team Contact:
Eric Chown, Megan Maher, Nikki Morin

Institutes:
Bowdoin College

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


NTU RoboPAL


Taiwan

Team Contact:
Chi-Shen (Daniel) Shih, (Team email)

Institutes:
Department of Computer Science and Information Engineering, National Taiwan University
Graduate Institute of Networking and Multimedia, National Taiwan University

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


Philosopher


Estonia

Team Contact:
Anastasia Bolotnikova, Gholamreza Anbarjafari

Institutes:
iCV group at IMS Lab of University of Tartu

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


RoboCanes


USA

Team Contact:
Ubbo Visser, Andreas Seekircher

Institutes:
Department of Computer Science, University of Miami

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


RoboEireann


Ireland

Team Contact:
Rudi Villing

Institutes:
Department of Computer Science, Maynooth University
Department of Electronic Engineering, Maynooth University

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


SPQR Team


Italy

Team Contact:
Domenico Daniele Bloisi, Vincenzo Suriani

Institutes:
Department of Computer, Control and Managemente engineering “Antonio Ruberti” at La Sapienza University of Rome

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


Team-NUST


Pakistan

Team Contact:
Dr. Yasar Ayaz, Zain Murtaza

Institutes:
Robotics and Intelligent Systems Engineering (RISE) Research Center, SMME, NUST

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


TJArk


China

Team Contact:
Chen Qijun, Li Shu

Institutes:
School of Electronics and Information Engineering, Tongji University

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


UChile Robotics Team


Chile

Team Contact:
José Miguel Yáñez A.

Institutes:
Department of Electrical Engineering, Universidad de Chile
Advanced Mining Technology Center, Universidad de Chile

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


UnBeatables


Brazil

Team Contact:
Cristiana Miranda, Felipe Dalosto

Institutes:
University of Brasilia
Laboratory of Automation and Robotics

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


UNSW Australia


Australia

Team Contact:
Claude Sammut, Sean Harris, Brad Hall

Institutes:
UNSW Australia

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


UPennalizers


USA

Team Contact:
Dr. Daniel Lee, Yongbo Qian

Institutes:
Grasp Lab of University of Pennsylvania
School of Engineering and Applied Science, University of Pennsylvania

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


UT Austin Villa


USA

Team Contact:
Katie Genter, Jacob Menashe

Institutes:
Department of Computer Science, The University of Texas at Austin

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