Team Leopard, led by 2nd-year Systems and Control Engineering student and Society for the Study of Robotics member Yuta Fujiyama, has scored a double victory at RoboCup 2021 WORLDWIDE, a global autonomous robot contest held online from June 22 to 28. Team Leopard, representing Japan and consisting of Fujiyama and two high school students, won the RoboCupJunior League Open category and Super Team category, the latter of which involved partner teams working together.
Teams Leopard's robots
RoboCup: Developing robots that think and move autonomously
RoboCup is a global robotics contest that aims to promote research in artificial intelligence and robotics. Its organizers have the ambition to create a team of autonomous robot players that can defeat the human World Cup soccer champions by the year 2050. The key in the competition is to create robots which are fully autonomous.
RoboCup began in 1992, and the first global competition was held in Japan in 1997. RoboCupSoccer eventually spawned new categories such as RobotCupRescue, which focuses on search and rescue scenarios and applications, and RobotCup@Home, which aims to develop service and assistive robot technology with high relevance for future personal domestic applications.
The RoboCupJunior League is for 14 to 19-year-olds who compete in four different categories.
RoboCupJunior Soccer: 13 global teams evaluated based on three categories
In the RoboCupJunior Soccer Open category, teams representing 13 countries and regions gathered to show off their technical skills in robot soccer. Traditionally, each team creates two soccer robots who then face off in a 2-on-2 soccer match to compete for points. However, the 2021 tournament was held online for the first time ever, and therefore no matches could be held. To make up for this, each team was evaluated based on three factors — a robot video, a team description paper, and the technical challenge. The winner was the team with the highest total score.
Robot composition
Team Leopard's robot video on YouTube
The aim of the robot video is to share new technologies in areas such as design and programming developed by each team each year, and to deepen knowledge regarding robotics across the broader community.
Each three-minute video introduces the team, and summarizes the reasoning behind their decisions in design, component selection, and programming during the robot manufacturing process. Many videos also share details of experiments conducted during robot development and related data.
Team description paper reveals more detailed technology and strategy
The team description paper is a brief research paper that can be used to explain in more detail aspects that are not included in the video. This can include more information about the team's background, new technologies introduced in hardware and software, strategies, future prospects, and the like.
