Eindhoven robots win on penalty shoot-out

“A nerve-wracking final”, is how coach Roel Merry describes the match. Tech United scored the opening goal, but then the Stuttgart team equalised. At the end of official time the score was still 1-1. After that, the German team had the first five penalty shots. Two of them missed, and the Tech United keeper stopped another two.

 “When it was our turn, the first two shots went straight in”, says Merry. “That meant we were the European champions. Which was a big relief after all those months of hard work, it’s a great feeling.”

According to the Merry. “We had a few collisions and some problems with the network, which meant there were a lot of interruptions in the game. The semi-final, against the former world champions, was a better match – that was real soccer.”

Tech United is the only Dutch team in this year’s European and World Championships. The team play in the senior middle-size class. Last year the Eindhoven robots took third place in the European Championship and came fifth in the World Championship in Atlanta.

Since then a lot of work has been done on the robots. One of the improvements is the increased dynamics. Formerly the robots had fixed roles, but now they can communicate with each other and change functions if necessary. That proved to be useful in the penalty shoot-out during this European Championship – the robot that was in goal was the same one that took the penalties.

RoboCup is a worldwide organisation that promotes robotics research. It holds robot soccer matches in which teams of six robots play against each other autonomously. The European and World Championships largely follow the FIFA rules.

Source: http://w3.tue.nl/en/news/