RoboCup2004
 

 

ROPE II in RoboCup 2004, Portugal

Team ROPE 2004

 

ROPE II was among the 13 participating robots in the Humonoids League.   The competition results were based on the robots’ comprehensive performance in four games, namely Walking, Challenge (including Obstacle Walking, Walking on Ramp and Ball Passing), Freestyle and Penalty kick. Click here for a detailed result report from the official website of RoboCup 2004.  ROPE II was ranked 5th in the overall ranking and 2nd in the H80 Category.  

 

With the aim of developing a team of fully autonomous humanoid robots that can win against the human world soccer champion team by 2050, RoboCup was set up a few years ago.  It is held annually and has established itself as one of the most important robotics events in the world. This year, the RoboCup was held in Lisbon, Portugal in June.  It has drawn an unprecedented number of teams to compete in the Humanoid League of the event.  Our humanoid robot, ROPE II, is one of them.

 

 
All participating robots
Final preparation before the event
ROPE II is a humanoid robot which we have built from scratch in the Legged Locomotion Group led by Dr. Chew Chee Meng, A/P Hong Geok Soon and Prof Poo Aun Neow.  The group belongs to the Control & Mechatronics Lab, Department of Mechanical Engineering, NUS.  ROPE stands for RObot PEle or RObot for Personal Entertainment.  ROPE II is the second prototype. Although we initially designed and built it for research purpose rather than for competition, ROPE II performed reasonably well in the competition.   It was ranked 4th in both Walking and Free-style, and made it into the semi-final in the Penalty kick event, knocking out a number of veteran participating robots.  In fact, within the H80 category, it was ranked 2nd in Walking and 1st in Free Style.
The brain of ROPE II is PC-104, which is a small size version of PC compatible. All the movements including normal walking and ball kicking are computed based on various types of sensory information. All the computation is done on board. This makes ROPE II a real autonomous robot. Rather than playing back the motion recorded beforehand, ROPE II can modify its movements according to the real environment. For example, in the penalty kick event as shown on the right, ROPE II searches for the ball on the ground, walk to the ball, and shoot it towards the target.
ROPE II kicking a ball

 

 

Our Team in RoboCup 2004, Portugal

Ho Hoan Nghia, M.Eng student

Sim Wai Yong, Ph.D student

 

Current Team Members

Aiming to enhance the performance of our robots for next year's RoboCup event in Osaka, we now have several  graduate and FYP students working on the project.  Beside ROPE, we also wish to send HOAP and NUSBIP II, another two humanoid robots in the Legged Locomotion group, to RoboCup2005, Osaka, next year.

If you are interested to be part of the team, please feel free to contact us.  We would be able to offer UROP, RBVIP, FYP and even postgraduate projects related to this competition.

 

 

Video Clips of ROPE II in action

ROPE II in Walking Challenge

Penalty Kick - ROPE II vs Issac

Penalty Kick - ROPE II vs Robot Erectus

 

More information about ROPE II can be found here

 

 

 

We will be back next year in RoboCup 2005, Osaka!

 

 

Last Modified: Aug. 16, 2004