RoboTeam Twente ended up in fourteenth position in the RoboCup 2017.
It was the first time that the team from Twente had competed in the Robot Football World Cup, held this year in the Japanese city of Nagoya. To achieve fourteenth position in a field of twenty competitors is an excellent accomplishment for a team’s debut in this major international event.
Students at the University of Twente only began building the robot football team less than a year ago. Almost every detail of the robot was designed and built by the students themselves. The team and its robots, with such illustrious names such as Abe, Edwin, Wesley, Arjen and Dennis, earned themselves a place in the Japan-based tournament earlier this year.
Tournament progress
The World Cup started last Thursday with the matches in the knock-out phase. Two draws and two defeats left the team in fourth position in the group, just slightly less than needed to qualify for the main tournament. RoboTeam Twente put on a good display of football. At times, the defence was impenetrable and some quick breakthroughs resulted in several good attempts at goal.
But it was not until the play-offs that the Twente team really came into their own. With three victories in a row, the team sailed through to the finals of the play-offs. In that match, they were defeated 3-0 by the stronger Minibots team from the University of Massachusetts.
Team captain Ewoud Croll was happy with the team’s performance: “Fourteenth place is a good result for a debut competition. Our performance didn’t go unnoticed by the other teams. We’re incredibly proud of the team and the robots. We’ve been working towards this for a long time and even during the tournament we took advantage of every spare moment to improve the robots’ performance.”
More to come
In the new academic year, a new group of students will build on the work achieved by the current RoboTeam Twente. With the support of several students in the current group, they will continue development of the robot football team. The next Robot Football World Cup will be in Canada in 2018.
