RoboCup 2015 has come to its awesome conclusion. The ‘bots ran, walked, fell and kicked their way through 4 days of excellent soccering. With a multitude of divisions and teams, the competition was stiff!
In an ironic parallel with the Soccer World Cup. playing surfaces were one of the more contentious points of the competition: previously, the ‘bots had played on a smooth carpet, where this year the surface was an artificial turf. One of our top picks, the Bold Hearts lost out on the chance to reclaim their 2nd Place Title from last year in part because of the different compositions of artificial turf. The team seems to be taking it well though…
The Bold Hearts: always winners in our eyes.
Our favorite match of the Cup? When my alma matter, the excellent University of New South Wales, became champions of the world.
That’s right, the Australian team took the Standard Platform League by storm, eventually beating the German team, B-Human, 3-1 in a nailbiting finish, now set to rock music.1
The Standard League may be our favorite, but they were only a fraction of the action this weekend. In the Small Sized League (which I’m going to insist should be called “tiny bots”) Carnegie Mellon’s Dragons took home the gold. Again. They’ve won the title five times. They rock so hard.
Image Credit: Carnegie Mellon Dragons
In the Medium Sized League, our favorite team, The Turtles (Tech United, Eindhoven) lost in the final to one of the host teams, Water.
Heh, Water beat Turtles.
We bring you the highlights of the game, courtesy of Tech United, set to the sublime musical stylings of Ke$ha.
And our final highlight of the weekend, a humanoid kid sized robot competition between Rhoban (France) and another of the host teams, HFR. The winning team was a different host league, CIT Brains, whose name we love, but they seem to be a shy and retiring team without any video as yet, so instead we bring you this awesome battle. Rhoban went on to place third overall in their division. Don’t Stop Believin’ Rhoban!2
For complete coverage, check out all the results at the official RoboCup 2015 website.
Featured image courtesy of UNSW RoboCup