17.3 RoboCup 2021

RoboCup, the world cup for soccer robots, is a major annual event on the artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics calendar with a goal to advance the state of the art of intelligent robots. It sees teams from across the globe competing in different soccer leagues to show their mastery in AI and machine learning.

https://2021.robocup.org/ https://www.wits.ac.za/news/latest-news/research-news/2021/2021-06/dream-team-heads-for-world-robotics-soccer-cup.html

Wits participated in the 3D simulation league for the first time in 2021 which took place virtually from 22 – 28 June 2021.

The Wits FC team consisted of:

Branden Ingram
Andries Bingani
Faisal Saleem
Ghulame Mujtaba Arbi 
Devon Jarvis 
Michael Beukman 
Guy Axelrod

Qualified Teams:

Team Name         Affiliation(s)                                        Region        Team Leader
Apollo3D          Nanjing University Of Posts And Telecommunications    China           Kuihan Chen
BahiaRT         Bahia State University (UNEB)                       Brazil        Marco Simões
FCPortugal      University of Aveiro, University of Porto             Portugal      Miguel Abreu
HfutEngine2021  HeFei University of Technology                      China           Baofu Fang
ITAndroids      Instituto Tecnológico de Aeronáutica                  Brazil          Arthur Costa Stevenson Mota
KgpKubs         IIT Kharagpur                                         India         Sriyash Poddar
magmaOffenburg  Offenburg University                                  Germany         Klaus Dorer
Miracle3D         Hefei Normal University                               China           Fan Wang
MIRG              NIT Rourkela                                        India         Niraj Yadav
UT Austin Villa University of Texas at Austin                         USA             Patrick MacAlpine
WITS-FC         University of Witwatersrand                         South Africa    Branden Ingram
WrightOcean3D     wrightoceanoffical@126.com                            China           Fei Liu

Schedule:

All WITS matches can be seen here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hg3LwYEHsmI&list=PLKpgx6PvJTmVtpiN-9nBL-asb97eP7chV All matches were also live streamed here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCpMr8nYaN_EuBDRl0m9drGQ and https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCeMDZjkTODUpYBWxCYmZA0w

Seeding Round:

Round 1:

Ranking Round:

Finals:

Scientific Challenge:

In summary we were proud of our achievements across the duration of the competition seeing us draw against multiple competitive teams which secured us the BEST NEW TEAM award. Going forward we identified the need for optomised kicking and walking parameters.