Kampus ITS, ITS News – The satisfying and proud results were achieved by the soccer robot team from the Institut Teknologi Sepuluh Nopember (ITS) Surabaya. After competing against teams from around the world, Ichiro ITS Team successfully brought home the first place in the Robocup Humanoid Soccer League category of the Teen Size Technical Challenge in the annual Robocup 2019 event which was held in Sydney, Australia and ended on Monday (8/7) local time.

Not only that, but the humanoid robot from ITS Ichiro Team also successfully won third place in the category Robot Soccer Teen Size and Kid Size Technical Challenge. While the wheeled soccer robot, IRIS ITS Team, which was the first time to compete in the event, won a fifth place in the Soccer Middle Size League competition.

The RoboCup Humanoid Soccer League is divided into three categories based on the size of the robot, namely Kid Size, Teen Size, and Adult Size. The Team Leader of ITS Ichiro, Sulaiman Ali, explained that in this 2019 Robocup competition, ITS Ichiro delegated two teams in the category of Teen Size and Kid Size.

For the Kid Size category, the competing robots are 40 – 90 centimeters (cm) with the maximum number of four robots for each team. As for the Teen Size category, the competing robots are 80 – 140 cm with a maximum number of three robots for each team.

It is different from the previous year, where the number of robots that competed was a maximum of two robots. In addition to football matches, in this Robocup Humanoid Soccer League competition, several other competitions are contested, namely Technical Challenge and Drop-in Games.

In the teen size category, there are eight teams from various countries, such as China, Iran, Australia, Germany, Brazil, Korea, etc. Matches in this category are divided into two group phases. In the group phase, ITS Ichiro Team was only ranked at the second place. “It is because Ichiro’s robot appearance is still not stable to adjust the game in the field,” said Ali in a statement sent via online message.

Ichiro’s Robot in that category began to stabilize in the quarter-finals and was proven by his landslide victory 4-0. Next, in the semi-finals, it was a difficult match for both teams. It is because both of these teams were finalists from the last year competition, namely ITS Ichiro Team from Indonesia and the team from Iran. The second meeting in the semi-finals ended with a score of 1-3 for Iran team victory who was entitled to advance to the finals.

Not giving up there, the Ichiro’s robot teen size still have to snatch for third place who bring them to the team from Korea. But the attacker robot from Ichiro team has encountered some problems in the mechanical part of the robot, so the match had to end draw with an eyeglass score a.k.a. 0-0. When it continued to the extra time round, luckily the Ichiro’s attacker robot team had been able to get back into the field, and in the end, ITS Ichiro successfully bent the opponent with a score of 3-0.

ITS Ichiro Team when receiving the first prize of the Robocup Humanoid Soccer League category of Teen Size Technical Challenge in the Robocup 2019 competition.

Meanwhile, in the Technical Challenge competition, several challenges must be passed by the robots, such as Push Recovery, Kicking from Moving Ball, High Kick, and High Jump. At the Kicking off Moving Ball Challenge, the robot is placed at the penalty point and has to kick the ball from the corner of the field. As many as three times, Ichiro’s robot manages to complete it successfully. Then at the Push Recovery Challenge, Ichiro’s Robot can also achieve it successfully, but on the last two challenges, High Jump and High Kick, Ichiro’s robot can not finish it. “Although only succeeded to complete two challenges, we managed to obtain the first place in this Technical Challenge on Teen Size category,” said Ali proudly.

Besides, Ali continued, on this year, the Ichiro Teen Size team only carries two robots to compete, while the teams from other countries carry more than three robots. It certainly made the competition more difficult than the previous year. “But on the other hand, the algorithms for playing the ball and the robot detection for the ball of Ichiro Teen Size team is better than the other team,” said this last year’s student.

In the Kid Size category, there are 16 teams from various countries including France, Iran, Japan, China, Korea, England, New Zealand, Russia, and others. Amazingly, three of them are from Indonesia, namely from Surabaya State Electronics Polytechnic (PENS), Batam State Polytechnic (Polibatam) and ITS. Unfortunately, Ichiro’s hard effort in this category was only able to go through until the quarter-finals. In the Kid Size Technical Challenge, Ichiro only successfully obtains the third place.

As for the IRIS team, they successfully obtained the fourth place out of nine participants in the first Robin Round. To determine which team to qualify for the semifinals, a rematch was held in the second Robin Round. The IRIS team has gone through a fierce match and earns a 1 – 0 score over Tim Musashi from Japan.

The ITS Iris team prepares to race in the Robocup 2019 event in Sydney, Australia.

But at the end of the race, the IRIS team was only able to finish at fifth place. However, the results were a major achievement for the IRIS team. The reason is that they have only participated in this event for the first time and were able to win in several matches against experienced teams such as Dutch and Japanese teams.

Meanwhile, ITS Robotics Team Builder, Muhtadin ST MT, also admitted that the achievement of Ichiro team in the Robocup 2019 was very good because they had succeeded in getting all three achievements at once. Compared to the last year, Ichiro won the first place on Teen Size category, while this year there was a slight decline because they were only able to reach third place.

However, according to Muhtadin, the achievement is to be proud of with all the limitations of Ichiro Team had. “The other teams that competed in the Teen Size category almost all have four to five humanoid robots, while Ichiro has only two humanoid robots,” said the Faculty of Electrical Technology (FTE) lecturer.

The next Target for Ichiro’s team is to prepare for the 2019 FIRA Hurocup competition which will be held in Korea in the upcoming August 2019. Hopefully, the best achievement can be obtained as last year, that is as many as 16 awards or even exceed it. “The support of ITS and sponsors is very kind to Ichiro’s team, so we are determined to give the best in the form of the best achievement to make Indonesia proud at an international level,” he concluded.

The teams participating in Robocup 2019 in Sydney, Australia.

Just for the information, in Robocup 2019 in Australia, for the competition of the Humanoid Soccer League Robocup from Indonesia represented by three universities, namely ITS Ichiro Team, Eros of PENS, and Barelang-FC from the  Batam State Polytechnic. Of all the robot teams, only ITS Ichiro Team managed to get the award. (SOF/gayatri/ITS Public Relation)