RoboTeam Twente in 2022

The RoboTeam Twente is a student team designing, developing, and engineering football robots to compete in the RoboCub, the world cup for robot soccer. We want to innovate and inspire in the field of robotics and artificial intelligence.

In the Last blog we described in detail how we were planning to improve all eleven robots of the RoboTeam Twente. In this blog, we cover the results of the changes of the past year and share more about our experience during the RoboCup 2022 in Bangkok Thailand last July.

The new robots

A lot has been changed in the new robots compared to previous generation. To be more specific, merely the omnidirectional wheels survived the complete mechanical and electronical haul over. The new PCBs, as shown in last post were finalised and produced by Eurocircuits. The revamp of our robots would have not been possible if it wasn’t for their help and service in the production of our PCBs.

Mechanically, a big change was moving from off-the-shelf solenoids to custom-made units. Solenoids are coils of wire which can be turned into electromagnets. These are used to shoot a plunger forward, which we use for shooting a ball. These solenoids provide some interesting electronic challenges. But tuning its mechanical characteristics is also a precise job. The coils should all be wound as similar manner. The mechanics team did a great job on creating the new solenoids.

Curious to know more about the changes made to the robot? Check out last year’s reveal presentation.

Going to Thailand

In the second week of July, all robots got packed into cases and got, together with the rest of the team, flown to Bangkok. It was quite a long trip, and not all robots were still in good shape when arriving. Lucky there were some days left to fix them before the start of the actual cup.

Then, finally, the moment has come where we had been working towards, our first match. It was immediately a big challenge because it was against the winners of last year’s RoboCup. As expected, we failed in beating them. Lucky, we got a second change later that day against another team. This time we performed better and won by 2-0.

The following two days we played six more games and ended up in the semifinals.

The semifinals were against ER-force from Germany. We had our hopes up, and the game took off quite promising. Unfortunately, we made a foul during a penalty for them, and doing so awarded them a free point. We were not able to correct this, and thus we were not placed in the finals.

We ended up with the third prize, which we are proud of.

Want to see how these little robots race across the field during an actual game? Watch our match broadcasts on YouTube.