Germans supreme in Humanoid Teen Size final

30 Jun, 2013

The NimbRo TeenSize team from Germany had an easy win in the final of the Humanoid Teen Size League against CIT Brains Teen from Japan. The Japanese team had problems with their robots, while both the German robots were on the field for most of the match – a numerical superiority which they used to full advantage.

The matches in the Teen Size League are played between two teams, each with two robots. The humanoid robots have arms and legs, and are between 90 and 120 centimeters tall. If they fall over they can stand up again without assistance.

In the first half the German robots played a more aggressive game than their Japanese opponents. Making matters worse were the problems with the Japanese robots, which regularly fell over and had difficulty in standing up again. That meant the robots had to be taken off the field, which gave the German team plenty of opportunities to score. Which is exactly what they did – by half-time the score was already 3-0.

But as the end of the match approached, the German robots also had some technical problems. So when both the Japanese and German teams each had one of their robots on the sidelines, that gave Japan a great chance to get back on equal terms. With the German team reduced to half-strength, it looked as though the Japanese robot would be shooting at an open goal – but the one remaining German robot was just able to block the shot in time. After which it immediately put the ball into the undefended Japanese goal with a shot that was exactly hard enough.

Finally the German team got the chance to finish the game with a 5-0 score. The only Japanese robot had fallen over, while the Germans had by then brought their second player back onto the field. With no Japanese robot on the field and the ball no more than a meter in front of the Japanese goal, the Germans just missed scoring one more time. Just when it was about to take that final shot, their robot fell over.

But that didn’t change the verdict – their 4-0 lead wasn’t threatened.