RoboTeam Twente in 2023

RoboTeam Twente

RoboTeam Twente is a multidisciplinary student team that specialises in the design, development, and engineering of autonomous football robots. Their main goal is to inspire and innovate in the field of robotics and AI. This is accomplished mainly through the development of their robots, as well as talks, workshops, and attendance at events. The team wants to showcase to the world the potential of artificial intelligence in combination with robotics.

Since the team is multidisciplinary, it consists of a group of students from both the University of Twente and Saxion University of Applied Sciences. People from all kinds of backgrounds, such as electrical and mechanical engineering, biomedical sciences, psychology, and many more studies, work together in this diverse project.

The RoboCup

Every year, this team takes part in the RoboCup, a worldwide tournament focused on the many fields of robotics that exist today. Specifically, RoboTeam Twente participates in the football league, with the help of their small-sized robots. The main objective of this competition is to beat a human football team with robots by the middle of the 21st century. Football is specifically chosen since it is a rapidly changing dynamic environment that requires high-paced games and quick strategies from both the central AI and the individual robots.

Something that makes the RoboCup unique is the fact that this competition is very much focused on innovation. The most important way of pushing the boundaries is by requiring each team to share their best improvements of the year in a paper. Additionally, many teams have their designs and code fully open source, allowing anyone to contribute to their projects.

Collaboration with Eurocircuits

During our last article, we mentioned that we have made significant improvements to our dribbler PCB and our kicker and chipper PCB. This time we would like to discuss their performance during the RoboCup that took place from the 4th till the 9th of July in Bordeaux.

Dribbler Board

With the help of our new dribbler boards, we have been able to completely switch out our dedicated ball sensors to already existing components within our robots, making sure that we use less space and less materials within a single robot. During our matches our robots were able to determine whether they had a ball very reliably, which was the goal of our new dribbler board setup. As discussed in our last article, our existing dribbler bars are now also able to sense ball contact, with the help of more advanced encoders in our motors.

The image below shows some technical test results, obtained with our new ball sensor. This image displays the measured velocity of our dribbler bar and whether it is assumed that the robot has the ball, yes or no.

Kicker Chipper Board

Not only was the dribbler PCB fully finalised, the same happened for our kicker chipper PCB. After the initial round of prototypes a few design choices were altered, and the final design was set on. In the picture below one can find an almost fully assembled PCB with the latest design. Can you spot the difference between this one and the prototype from our last article?

Amazing customer support

Next to the technical support that we always receive from the friendly engineers at Eurocircuits. We would also like to thank all the other supporting staff that have helped us to successfully order our new PCB sets. By allowing fast shipments and temporary shipment addresses we have been able to receive our final sets of PCBs in France! We especially thank Patricia for her fast responses and problem-solving skills!

Next to the logistical support a shout-out to the amazing technical support that we always get with every order! From proposed solutions to minor and major design flaws to suggestions for alternative components, the engineers from Eurocircuits know how to get the best out of your PCB design.

Eurocircuits has been a beloved partner for years, we value their PCB quality and their support highly and are grateful for their partnership!