Participating Teams 2011 – RoboCup Standard Platform League

Austrian-Kangaroos	Austria Team Contact: Dietmar Schreiner, Alexander Hofmann, Markus Bader Institutes: Vienna University of Technology – Institute of Computer Languages, Compilers and Languages Group University of Applied Sciences Technikum Wien Vienna University of Technology – Automation and Control Institute
Team Profile:	The Austrian Kangaroos are a team of students and scientists from the Automation and Control Institute (ACIN) and the Institute of Computer Languages Compilers and Languages Group (COMPLANG) from the Vienna University of Technology, as well as from the Institute of Computer Science from the University of Applied Sciences Technikum Wien.
Research Topics:	computer vision, computational intelligence, social and management aspects in mid to large scale project teams, real-time systems, robust embedded systems
Team Report:	tqp2011_austrian-kangaroos.pdf

B-Human	Germany Team Contact: Thomas Roefer Institutes: DFKI Bremen University of Bremen
Team Profile:	B-Human consists of students from the University of Bremen in their advanced study period and researchers from the DFKI Bremen. B-Human participated in the Humanoid Kid Size League at RoboCup 2007 and 2008. We also participated as BreDoBrothers, a cooperation with the TU Dortmund, in the Standard Platform League in 2008 as well as in the Humanoid Kid Size League 2006. In 2009 and 2010, B-Human participated in the Standard Platform League and won the RoboCup German Open and the RoboCup World Championship in both years, as well as the RoboCup Technical Challenge in 2009. B-Human team members also won the Best Paper Award at RoboCup Symposium 2010.
Research Topics:	Probabilistic state estimation, real-time computer vision, robot simulation, and humanoid walking
Team Report:	bhuman10_coderelease.pdf

BURST	Israel Team Contact: Gal Kaminka, Eli Kolberg, Matan Keidar, Eran Polosetski Institutes: Maverick lab, Department of Computer Science, Bar-Ilan University
Team Profile:	Team consists of graduate and undergraduate students of Bar-Ilan University. BURST participated in Robocup 2009. BURST qualified to the top 16 in Robocup 2009.
Research Topics:	Learning bi-pedal walking, Multi-robot formations, Multi-robot area patrol, Visual SLAM
Team Report:	N/A

Cerberus	Turkey Team Contact: H.Levent Akın Institutes: Department of Computer Engineering, Bogazici University
Team Profile:	Team consists of graduate and undergraduate students of BU AILAB. Cerberus participated in RoboCup since 2001 except the year 2004. Cerberus was ranked 1st in the Technical Challenges in 2005 and made it to the quarterfinals in 2006 and 2008. Cerberus took the fourth place in RoboCup German Open 2007.
Research Topics:	Self localization, multi-agent task allocation, path planning and obstacle avoidance, reinforcement learning, POMDPs
Team Report:	N/A

CMurfs	USA Team Contact: Somchaya Liemhetcharat Institutes: School of Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon University
Team Profile:	CMurfs – Carnegie Mellon United Robots for Soccer is a RoboCup team developed in the CORAL group of CMU, and we have been participating in RoboCup since 1997, in different leagues such as SSL and SPL.
Research Topics:	Artificial intelligence, Multi-robot Coordination, Legged robot motion planning, Path planning, Computer vision, Localization, POMDPs
Team Report:	N/A

Dutch Nao Team	The Netherlands Team Contact: Duncan ten Velthuis Institutes: University of Amsterdam, Faculty of Science, Informatics Institute
Team Profile:	The Dutch Nao Team consists of large group of second-year Artificial Intelligence(AI) students, supported by a senior staf-member. The Dutch Nao Team debuted in the SPL competition at the German Open 2010. The Team is the continuation of the Dutch Aibo Team; a cooperation of several Dutch universities who were active in the predecessor of the Standard Platform League. The Dutch Aibo Team has been successful, both in the competition and with a number of publications.
Research Topics:	Artificial Intelligence, Computer Vision, Motion, Diving, Communciation, World Modeling, Logic Programming
Team Report:	N/A

Edinferno	United Kingdom Team Contact: S. Ramamoorthy Institutes: Institute of Perception, Action and Behaviour, School of Informatics, University of Edinburgh
Team Profile:	Team consists of graduate and undergraduate students at the School of Informatics, lead by Dr. Subramanian Ramamoorthy. Edinferno is making its debut at RoboCup 2011.
Research Topics:	Autonomous decision making under uncertainty, Learning in single and multi-agent environments, Online motion synthesis, Probabilistic localization and vision
Team Report:	Edinferno11Report.pdf

L3M	France Spain Turkey Team Contact: Vincent HUGEL Institutes: Laboratoire d’Ingenierie des Systemes de Versailles (LISV), Universite de Versailles (UVSQ), France Laboratoire d’Informatique Avancee de Saint-Denis (LIASD), Universite Paris 8 (UP8), France Institut des Sciences et Techniques de Yvelines (ISTY), UVSQ, France Departamento de Ingenieria de la Informacion y las Comunicaciones, Grupo de Investigacion de Ingenieria Aplicada (GIIA), Universidad de Murcia, Espana Instituto Universitario de Automatica e Informatica Industrial (AI2), Universidad Politecnica de Valencia (UPV), Espana Istanbul Teknik Universitesi (ITU), Faculty of Mechanical Engineering, Turkey
Team Profile:	The L3M team (alias “Les Trois Mousquetaires”, “Los Tres Mosqueteros”, “The Three Musketeers”) will be a French-Spanish-Turkish joint team composed of master students and professors from Universities and institutes of the three countries. French members are within “Universite de Versailles”, “Universite Paris 8” and “ISTY” Versailles University Engineering school. Spain members come from “Universidad de Murcia” and “Universidad Politecnica de Valencia”. Turkish members are from “Istanbul Teknik Universitesi”. The French and Spanish members participated in the AIBO league for several years. Best results of L3M participations in RoboCup include 1st rank in 1999, 2nd in 2001, and fourth in 2002. The team Los Hidalgos from Spain won the RomeCup in 2010 in the SPL.
Research Topics:	Mobile robotics, legged locomotion, mechanics, real time embedded systems, sensorization and perception, embedded vision.
Team Report:	2010_SPL_L3M_Team_Report.pdf

Mi-Pal	Australia Spain Team Contact: Vlad Estivill-Castro Institutes: School of Informaiton adn Communicaiton technologyCT – Griffith University Departament de Tecnologies de la Informació i les Comunicacions – Univeritat Pomepu Fabra
Team Profile:	Team consists of graduate and undergraduate students. Mi-Pal participated in RoboCup since 2002 except the year 2007-2010.
Research Topics:	The Artificial Intelligence Group at the Department of Technology, in Universitat Pompeu Fabra, studies computational models of reasoning, action, learning, and perception. The research interests of the academic team at Griffith University are human-robot interaction, vision, multi-agent systems, reasoning, and learning for intelligent mobile agents. Our expertise has continued to be the development of a flexible and generic software architecture and our research publications demonstrate this (see list of publications). More recently our research has produced capabilities to model behaviors of robots at a high level description by combining reactive mechanisms (modeled by finite state machines) and non-monotonic reasoning (represented by logics like Plausible Logic).
Team Report:	N/A

MRL-SPL	Iran Team Contact: Ehsan Hashemi Institutes: Mechatronics Research Lab., Qazvin Azad University
Team Profile:	MRL-SPL team is one of research divisions of the Mechatronics Research Laboratory formed last year and consists of graduate and undergraduate students of Qazvin Azad University. MRL works under supervision of Qazvin Azad University and its main research interests are artificial intelligence and robotics.
Research Topics:	Bipedal Locomotion, Trajectory Planning, Optimum Preview Control, Multi-Agent Coordination, Modeling and Control
Team Report:	N/A

Nao Devils Dortmund	Germany Team Contact: Stefan Czarnetzki Institutes: Robotics Research Institute, TU Dortmund
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
Team Report:	NaoDevils2010.pdf

Nao-Team HTWK	Germany Team Contact: Rico Tilgner Institutes: Faculty of Computer Science, Mathematics and Natural Sciences, Leipzig University of Applied Sciences
Team Profile:	The 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. The team participated in RoboCup 2009 and 2010 as well as the RoboCup German Open 2009 and 2010.
Research Topics:	Evolutionary Algorithms, Biped Walking, Artificial Intelligence, Multi-Robot Coordination, Computer Vision, Localization
Team Report:	teamReportHTWK2010.pdf

Nao Team Humoldt	Germany Team Contact: Heinrich Mellmann Institutes: Department of Artificial Intelligence, Humboldt Universitat zu Berlin
Team Profile:	The Nao Team Humboldt (NaoTH) consists of students and researchers from the Humboldt-Universitat zu Berlin. It was founded at the end of 2007 as the successor of the Aibo Team Humboldt (ATH). The ATH was participating in RoboCup from 1999 to 2008. As part of the German Team they won three times the World Championship in the Four-Legged League and twice the technical challenge. At the moment, the NaoTH participates in both, SPL and S3L with the common core program. In 2010 we got the vice world champion in S3D. Beside this, in both leagues we achieved good results in a number of local competitions and technical challenges, e.g., in 2010 we won the German Open and AutCup in S3D and the Greek RoboCup Championship SETN in SPL.
Research Topics:	Active vision, integration of SPL and S3D, Self localization, biped walk, behavior control, computer vision
Team Report:	NaoTH10Report.pdf

Northern Bites	USA Team Contact: Eric Chown, Jack Morrison Institutes: Bowdoin College
Team Profile:	A completely undergraduate team from Bowdoin College in Brunswick, ME, USA, the Northern Bites have been competing in RoboCup since 2006. The Northern Bites earned first place in 2007 with the Aibo, 3rd in 2008, and returned to the SPL final in 2009 to place second with the Nao. In 2010, the Northern Bites advanced to the quarterfinals.
Research Topics:	Robot vision, cognitive robotics, gait learning, bipedal motion
Team Report:	N/A

Noxious-Kouretes	United Kingdom Greece Team Contact: Torbjørn S. Dahl, Stephen Cameron, Michail G. Lagoudakis Institutes: Cognitive Robotics Research Center (CRRC), University of Wales, Newport, UK Computing Laboratory (ComLab), University of Oxford, UK Intelligent Systems Laboratory, Department of ECE, Technical University of Crete, Greece
Team Profile:	Team Noxious-Kouretes is a joint team formed by three universities (Newport, Oxford, TUC) in two countries (UK, Greece). It counts 15 members in total including professors, researchers, and students from all three institutions. Team Noxious is new to SPL, but has received several distinctions in the 2D/3D Simulation League under the name OxBlue: runner-up in UK FIRA competition 2007; 8th place in 2D Sim, 12th place in 3D Sim at RoboCup 2008; 2nd place in 2D Sim at RoboCup 2009; and 3rd place in 3D Sim at RC4EW 2010. Team Kouretes participates in RoboCup competitions since 2006 and has received several distinctions: 2nd place in MSRS at RoboCup 2007; 3rd place in SPL-Nao, 1st place in SPL-MSRS, among the top 8 teams in SPL-Webots at RoboCup 2008; 1st place in RomeCup 2009; 6th place in SPL-Webots at RoboCup 2009; and 2nd place in SPL at RC4EW 2010.
Research Topics:	Reliable Object Recognition, Motion Skill Learning, Model-Based Agent Engineering, Walk Learning
Team Report:	Noxious-Kouretes Qualification Document

NTU RobotPal	Taiwan Team Contact: Chieh-Chih (Bob) Wang Institutes: Department of Computer Science and Information Engineering, National Taiwan University
Team Profile:	Team consists of graduate and undergraduate students of the Robot Perception and Learning Lab. NTU RobotPal participated in RoboCup SPL in 2009 and 2010, and made it to the quarterfinal in 2009.
Research Topics:	multi-robot localization and tracking, motion planning, activity recognition, robot perception, machine learning
Team Report:	N/A

NUbots	Australia Team Contact: Stephan Chalup, Steven Nicklin, Aaron Wong Institutes: Newcastle Robotics Laboratory, Faculty of Engineering and Built Environment, The University of Newcastle, Australia
Team Profile:	The NUbots are the robot soccer team of The University of Newcastle in Australia. They have participated in the RoboCup Standard Platform League since 2002. They achieved world-champion titles in 2006 and as part of the joint NUManoids team (Australia/Ireland) in 2008.
Research Topics:	Robot vision, machine learning, dimensionality reduction, localisation and Kalman filters, statistical computing, biped robot locomotion, anthropocentric biocybernetic computing.
Team Report:	N/A

Portuguese Team	Portugal Team Contact: Luis Paulo Reis, Nuno Lau, Antonio Jose Neves, Antonio Paulo Moreira Institutes: University of Aveiro University of Porto IEETA – Institute of Electronics and Telematics Engineering of Aveiro LIACC – Artificial Intelligence and Computer Science Lab., Univ. Porto INESC-P – Institute for Systems and Computers Engineering – Porto
Team Profile:	The Portuguese Team is composed by members of the three Portuguese teams that achieved better results in RoboCup European and World championships: FC Portugal, CAMBADA and 5DPO. Researchers from two different universities (University of Porto and University of Aveiro) in Portugal join efforts to build a new research oriented and competitive SPL team.
Research Topics:	Multi-Agent Systems (MAS); coordination in MAS; Agent based simulation; Game analysis, strategic reasoning and tactical modeling; Multi-robot monitoring and debugging; Sensor and information fusion; Real time image processing, including stereo vision; Bridging the gap between simulated and real robotics.
Team Report:	N/A

RoboEireann	Ireland Team Contact: Rick Middleton Institutes: Hamilton Institute, NUI Maynooth Department of Electronic Engineering, NUI Maynooth Department of Computer Science, NUI Maynooth
Team Profile:	This team came into being in 2008 as a joint Irish / Australian entry under the banner of NUManoids, which went on the win the world cup in the standard platform league in Suzhou. In 2009 Roboeireann was formed as an Irish team based in NUI Maynooth. We have taken part in the world cups in 2009 and 2010 as well as the German Open in 2010. The team is based in the Hamilton Institute of NUI Maynooth which is a research facility focused on applications to provide a bridge between mathematics and its applications in ICT and biology. The team consistes of both under-graduate and post-graduate students from the departments of Computer Science, Electronic Engineering and the Hamilton Institute.
Research Topics:	Dynamic Balancing Systems, Novel Localization approaches, Improved Object Identification
Team Report:	N/A

rUNSWift	Australia Team Contact: Benhard Hengst, Maurice Pagnucco Institutes: School of Computer Science and Engineering, The University of New South Wales
Team Profile:	Team consists of CSE undergraduate students. UNSW had success in the 4-Legged League of RoboCup when they participated from 1999 to 2006 – from eight attempts they made the final six times, winning the league three times and coming second another three times. This was despite the entire team of students were new each year, and that they were all undergraduates. Since 2008 they have competed in the renamed Standard Platform League, where they were quarter finalists in 2008 and placed 2nd in 2010. They were also 1st in the challenges in 2010.
Research Topics:	Machine learning, multi-robot coordination, human-robot interaction, reinforcement learning, AI planning.
Team Report:	http://www.cse.unsw.edu.au/~robocup/

SPIteam	Spain Team Contact: Jose M. Cañas Institutes: Robotics Group, Universidad Rey Juan Carlos Robotics Lab, Universidad de León Robotics and Computer Vision Group, Universitat Rovira i Virgili
Team Profile:	The team consists of graduate students, PhD students and researchers from three Spanish universities. SPIteam participated at MediterraneanOpen 2010 and split from the TeamChaos team, which participated in SPL in GermanOpen-2005, RoboCup-2005, RoboCup-2006, RoboCup-2008, RoboCup-2009 and GermanOpen-2009.
Research Topics:	Software architectures for robot behavior, self-localization, distributed perception, coordination, visual attention, visual 3D perception
Team Report:	SPIteam2011-report.pdf

SPQR+UChile	Italy Chile Team Contact: Luca Iocchi, Javier Ruiz del Solar Institutes: Department of Computer and System Sciences, Sapienza University of Rome, Italy Advanced Mining Technology Center, Universidad de Chile
Team Profile:	SPQR+UChile is the Chilean-Italian joint effort in RoboCup Standard Platform League, formed by the groups: UChile (Chile) and SPQR (Italy). The UChile robotics team (http://www.robocup.cl), led by Javier Ruiz-del-Solar, 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, @Home in 2007-2010, Humanoid in 2007-2010, and Standard Platform League in 2008-2010. SPQR (http://spqr.dis.uniroma1.it), led by Luca Iocchi, is the group of the Faculty of Engineering at Sapienza University of Rome in Italy, that is involved in RoboCup competitions since 1998 in different leagues: Middle-size 1998-2002, Four-legged 2000-2007, Real-rescue-robots 2003-2006, @Home in 2006, Virtual-rescue since 2006 and Standard platform League (Nao Division) since 2008.
Research Topics:	Self localization, multi-agent task allocation, path planning and obstacle avoidance, reinforcement learning, POMDPs
Team Report:	spqruchile_TDP.pdf

TeamNanyang	Singapore Team Contact: Chen I-Ming Institutes: School of Mechanical and Aearospce Engineering, Nanyang Technological University
Team Profile:	Nanyang was officially formed in May 2009 in the School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Nanyang Technological University as a part of the program to train student’s hands-on engineering and system integration capability and nurturing future robotics and mechatronics researchers.The team consists of undergraduate students from MAE BEng and EEE BEng.
Research Topics:	Study of humanoid robot platform as a system integration tool, Robot vision, Humanoid robot Navigation, Biped locomotion, Formation coordination and self-localization.
Team Report:	N/A

TJArk	China Team Contact: CHEN Qijun, Xie Jing 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,and participated in RoboCup for the first time in 2006. We entered the quarter finals in RoboCup 2007 and RoboCup 2008. And we entered the eighth finals in the Standard Platform of RoboCup 2009.
Research Topics:	Machine Vision, Motion Control of Biped Robot, Machine Learning, Self Localization,Multi-agent System .etc.
Team Report:	N/A

TT-UT Austin Villa	USA Team Contact: Todd Hester Institutes: Department of Computer Science, The University of Texas at Austin Department of Computer Science, Texas Tech University
Team Profile:	Our team is a collaboration between Texas Tech University and the University of Texas at Austin. We participated in the Aibo league starting in 2003 and started with the Naos in 2007. We won the 2009 SPL US Open and made the quarterfinals in RoboCup 2009. We won the 2010 SPL US Open and won 3rd place at RoboCup 2010.
Research Topics:	Self localization, multi-agent task allocation, path planning and obstacle avoidance, reinforcement learning, POMDPs
Team Report:	pdf

UPennalizers	USA Team Contact: Daniel Lee Institutes: GRASP Lab, School of Engineering and Applied Science, University of Pensylvania
Team Profile:	The team consists of graduate and undergraduate students of the University of Pennsylvania lead by Dr. Daniel Lee of the GRASP Lab. The UPennalizers have participated in the RoboCup SPL competition from 1999 through 2005 and returned in 2009 with a second place finish at the US Open.
Research Topics:	Self localization, path planning and obstacle avoidance, feedback based walk/motion engine, communication and collaboration
Team Report:	pdf

WPI Warriors	USA Team Contact: Sonia Chernova Institutes: Computer Science Department, Worcester Polytechnic Institute
Team Profile:	The WPI Warriors team consists of undergraduate students from the Computer Science and Robotics Engineerings programs. This is the first year that the team is competing in RoboCup.
Research Topics:	Multi-robot teaming, localization, path planning, world modeling
Team Report:	N/A

Wrighteagle Unleashed!	Australia China Team Contact: Xiaoping Chen, Mary-Anne Williams Institutes: University of Technology, Sydney University of Science and Technology of China
Team Profile:	Wright Eagle Unleashed! was created by uniting the University of Science and Technology China (Wright Eagle http://ai.ustc.edu.cn/) and the University of Technology Sydney Australia (UTS Unleashed! http://www.unleashed.it.uts.edu.au ) robot soccer teams. Wright Eagle Unleashed! established a new Nao Team in 2010 which ranked Top 10 for the Scientific Challenges and gained 5th place in all three challenges at RoboCup 2010. In 2008 we were Runners-Up in the Legged League. USTC has a strong record of success at RoboCup since competing in 1997 having won 4 Championships and 7 Runners Up at RoboCup competitions. UTS is known for its innovative style having developed the first dodge behavior in the legged league ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Diiv7kpW-ng ). The UTS Dodge transformed the game and was widely adopted after UTS introduced it in 2004. UTS Unleashed! were the Australian Champions in 2004 and won the Scientific Challenges, came 2nd in the Soccer at RoboCup 2004. In 2006 they were the first Robot Soccer Team to be invited to China where they played against all the Chinese Legged Teams in Exhibition Matches in Suzhou for China Science Week.
Research Topics:	Artificial intelligence, Multi-Robot Collaboration, Legged Robot Motion Planning, Path Planning, Computer Vision, Localization, Cognitive Modeling, Knowledge Representation, Attention, Anticipation and Autonomy
Team Report:	WrightEagleUnleashed2010TeamReport.pdf