RoboTeam Twente – Season 2022-2023

RoboTeam Twente

RoboTeam Twente is a multidisciplinary student team that specializes 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

RoboTeam Twente is constantly improving their robots and playmaking and has always been able to rely on the quick and high-quality service of Eurocircuits for the electrical aspects of our robots. The 7th generation of RoboTeam Twente has made various plans to improve the electronic circuitry in our robots, the details of which are outlined below.

Dribbler Board

Recently, we redesigned our PCB that controls our dribbling mechanism with the goal of enabling our robots to exert better control over the ball. This new and improved design is needed to enable different and more complicated hardware to be connected to our central system.

More specifically, this board is compatible with our new upgraded dribbler motors that come with higher precision encoders. With more ticks per revolution at our disposal, RoboTeam Twente can use this information to detect rapid changes in the encoder data that can instantly indicate whether a robot has the ball in its possession. This in turn allows for faster plays and more complicated moves on the field.

Kicker Chipper Board

Next to this dribbler PCB, we are working on our prototypes for the kicking and chipping mechanism for our robots. This mechanism requires a lot of power and requires sturdy PCBs with the proper voltage lines to allow for safe and consistent shots during our matches. These PCBs should safely transport up to 300V of energy when they power our solenoids. With the help of the prototyping service of Eurocircuits we can run through multiple iterations of our kicker and chipper plates before we start the complete production of them.

Soon, these new components will be put to the test during the next RoboCup, taking place in Bordeaux. Are you interested in the performance of the hardware and our team? Then follow the livestreams from the 6th to the 9th of July on our YouTube channel or stay tuned for the updates on our website and social media!