The ITS IRIS team prepares and checks the robot’s condition that is ready to compete in the Middle-Size League category, RoboCup 2021 Worldwide.

ITS Campus, ITS News – The Covid-19 pandemic period is not an obstacle to ignite the enthusiasm of the Sepuluh Nopember Institute of Technology (ITS) students in excelling in various competitions. One of them is the RoboCup 2021 Worldwide competition which is currently being followed by the ITS Robotics Team, from 22 – 28 June 2021, which will be held online.

Muhtadin ST MT, the Ichiro Team supervisor, explained that RoboCup is a prestigious international robot competition. Previously, ITS has been actively competing since RoboCup 2018, which was held in Canada. At that time, the ITS Robotics Team managed to occupy the highest rank, namely as the first winner. Then in 2020, the RoboCup competition was canceled due to the Covid-19 pandemic and was only held again in 2021, with the competition format being held online.

At the RoboCup 2021 Worldwide event this time, ITS sent two representatives, namely Team Ichiro, who is ready to compete in the Humanoid Soccer League category, and Team IRIS, which will compete Middle-Size League category. It is also known, on the occasion of this year’s RoboCup event, ITS became the only university in Indonesia that passed the RoboCup 2021 Worldwide selection.

He further explained that participants were required to design a 3D (3D) robot complete with kinematics in the Humanoid Soccer League category. Then participants also have to make programming on the robot. The robot in 3D and its program will then be submitted to the committee’s cloud server.

The display form of the humanoid robot soccer competition simulator, which was participated by the ITS Ichiro Team

“Later on, the committee will compete with robots and algorithms belonging to participants in the committee’s robot simulator, then the robot will play ball autonomously like a match in the real world,” explained Muhtadin.

One member of Ichiro’s programming team, Segara Bhagas Dagsapurwa, explained that so far Ichiro’s robots have competed on the simulator as requested by the committee. On an ongoing basis, the team also tested its algorithm to better get maximum results in scoring against the opponent’s goal.

This ITS Informatics Engineering Department student also explained the difficulties experienced by Ichiro’s team. One of them is at the stage of making 3D robots and algorithms. “In the process, we encountered several obstacles, one of which was that our computer capabilities were not as fast as those that the committee would use. However, we are trying to do some optimization so that we can still overcome it,” he explained.

Before reaching the international level competition stage, the Ichiro Team, led by Amik Rafly Azmi Ulya, succeeded in participating in a series of selections. First, they must make robot designs and algorithms written in the form of scientific papers to be evaluated by the RoboCup technical committee.

A member of the ITS Ichiro Team while preparing the program for the Humanoid Soccer League category competition, RoboCup 2021 Worldwide, which was held virtually

“Thank God we passed the selection; at that time, there were 17 teams from 12 countries that passed in the early stages,” said Segara. Then the team managed to proceed to the stage with strict rules, namely the most challenging set, causing three groups to withdraw.

While the IRIS wheeled robot team is also intensively developing its robot to compete in the 2021 RoboCup. In this year’s online competition format, the IRIS team does not need to compete with its robot. Still, the IRIS team must do scientific work related to the wheeled soccer robot algorithm and then present it to the committee online.

Krisna Pramudya Dharma, IRIS team leader, said that his team would present the algorithms that have been made in the Scientific Challenge competition. The IRIS team will also demonstrate the robot’s capabilities in terms of localization on wheeled robot soccer, contested in the Technical Challenge competition.

“This online competition presents its challenges for our team. Revisions and input from several previous competitions make this an input for us to improve in this RoboCup 2021 Worldwide competition,” explained the student from the Electrical Engineering Department.

Rudy Dikairono ST MT, the supervisor of the IRIS Team, explained that one of the obstacles in preparing for this competition was the Covid-19 pandemic. This pandemic forced the ITS robot team to start activities a bit late because the students involved were still at home.

However, Rudy added, in the end, some of the students involved in this competition were willing to come to campus. “We are committed to implementing health protocols that are following applicable rules so that we all remain safe but still able to excel,” explained the lecturer of the ITS Electrical Engineering Department.

Rudy also added that the spirit of the ITS robot team in the RoboCup 2021 Worldwide competition was also appreciated by the Indonesian Robot Contest Jury and the National Achievement Center (Puspresnas). In addition to getting support from ITS and ITS Ikoma, what makes us even more excited is that Puspresnas gives appreciation in financial assistance to the ITS Robot Team in this competition. “Hopefully, we can run this competition smoothly and get the best achievements for the IRIS Team and ICHIRO Team,” said Rudy ending. (far/ITS Public Relation)

Reporter: Fauzan Fakhrizal Azmi