Weigh-ins

If you’re a fan of boxing, or have seen any of the “Rocky” movies, you’re familiar with the weigh-in, the big tradition of taking the boxers’ height and weight to ensure he (or she) is fit for the intended bout category, be it welter-weight, middle-weight, or heavy-weight. 

Surprisingly, RoboCup’s soccer competition has its own weigh-in of its competitors. In these photos, our Team DARwIn robots are put under the test. Before robots can participate in the Kid-, Middle-, and Adult-Sized league games, they are measured, weighed, and inspected by judges with tape measures and keen eyes. 

P.S. We have yet to see a press conference where the robotic opponents lash out at each other. RoboCup is a overwhelmingly friendly event.

RoboCup 2012: Second day scores

A back view of CHARLI at play

Virginia Tech’s Robotics and Mechanisms Laboratory remained strong in its second day of competition, Thursday, 21 June 2012, at RoboCup 2012’s soccer leagues. TEAM DARwIn continues to dominate the Kid-Size Robot division, while CHARLI remained strong, pushing his win-loss stat to 4-1, respectively.

A roundup of scores:

Kid-Size: Team DARwIn (consisting of Virginia Tech and University of Pennsylvania students)

Vs. RoBIU, 5-1

Vs. NUbots, 10-0

Teen-Size: Team DARwIn-XOS (consisting of University of Pennsylvania and Virginia Tech students)

Vs. NimbRo, 0-9

Adult-Size: CHARLI (consisting solely of Virginia Tech students)

Vs. KW-1, 4-0

Vs. JoiTech, 3-1

For Day 3, Team DARwIn takes on Hamburg Bit Bots at 9 a.m. Central. More match-ups to be determined later. Go Hokies!

RoboCup 2012: Year of DARwIN?

Chase Nohm

Walking around the dozens of team tables at RoboCup 2012’s soccer competition, it’s clear: This is the year of the DARwIn. (Forget the Dragon.)


Virginia Tech’s Robotics and Mechanisms Laboratory (RoMeLa) was the only team in 2011 to bring the DARwIn-OP humanoid robot to RoboCup in Istanbul. They won the Kid-Sized soccer league championship with the roughly-18-inch’bot whose face resembles an owl combined with an Anime character.


DARwIn was RoMeLa’s original baby, a long-in-development miniature robot that went through many incarnations at Virginia Tech as DARwIn 1 through 4, starting in 2006. It played many RoboCups in China and Austria, among other countries. Then, in early 2011, a joint venture between RoMeLa the Korea-based robotics company Robotis furthered the design and look of the humanoid ’bot. Hence DARwIn-OP.


“DARwIn” stands for Dynamic Anthropomorphic Robot with Intelligence, while the, “OP” stands for Open-Platform. The names were coined, as almost all the robots at RoMeLa, by lab director/founder Dennis Hong.)


As of 20 June 2012, the first day of competition at RoboCup 2012, 8 out of 24 – a full one-third – teams in the Kid-Sized competitive had a DARwIn-OP robot in their corner, compared to only RoMeLa a year ago. Two terams signed on after their arrival at Mexico City. “Going from one to eight is really a huge jump in one year, and that’s not counting that DARwIn was a champion last year, and that had a huge impact in its popularity,” said Chase Nohm, an engineer with Robotis at RoboCup.


The company has a large exhibitor’s booth at the soccer competition, and has treated members well, if they use Robotis tech or not. On the first day of competition, the company paid for 100 pizzas to be delivered to the venue. As hundreds of team members have been busy prepping their robots, with little time to eat out, much less sight-see in Mexico City, the gesture was more than welcome.


Noh chalks up DARwIn-OP’s success not just to its championship status at the 2011 RoboCup, but because it’s a fully-open robotic tool. Teams, or any user, can take the robot and bend it to their will, not conform to its set rules as you would with say, a BluRay player or iPhone.


“You can hack it, morph it, modify its software and hardware,” Noh says. “You can build on it or take away from it. We just provide the core, and the users all write or build on it, the software core and the hardware core.”


Kayla Kim, overseas sales and marketing manager for Robotis, says the DARwIn-OP robot will only grow in popularity. “Many [teams from various] countries from Iran to Israel are using it, some are using it that that had to drop out or could not come,” she said, citing one team from Singapore that could not make the trip to Mexico City.


Earlier today, as seen in the above, Team DARwIn from RoMeLa played two teams with the same DARwIn-Op ’bot.(During such a competiotn, teams will “dress” their robots up in blue or pink cloth for easy identification.


Hong, for his part is thrilled.


“The whole idea was to open up, open source, DARwIn-OP so more people can use and share the technology,” Hong said. “I believe this is the best way, and the quickest way, to push the boundaries of robotics technology.”


Also happy with DARwIn-OP’s success: Jeakweon “J.K.” Han, who graduated with a Ph.D. in mechanical engineering from Virginia Tech this year, and is continuing work at Robotis, where he started in 1999. In past years, Han worked tirelessly at RoboCup competitions and, in 2011, introduced the world champ, and grand prix Louis Vuitton Humanoid Cup winner CHARLI to the Robotics world.


This year, at Mexico City, he is enjoying himself as an employee of Robotis, helping various student teams with their robots for competition, whether they use Robotis or not. “It’s amazing,” he said. “It’s really nice to enjoy it. Last year got very stressful.” 

Through CHARLI’s eye

A screen capture from the perspective of CHARLI

"Look into my eye."

The above image is a screen capture of what CHARLI sees as he is on the soccer field, ready to kick the ball. The reddish-dot is the orange soccer ball, the yellow, the goal posts. CHARLI’s sight – along with the DARwIn-OP robots, and all the robots here -- is color-based, and he is programmed to autonomously recognize and base his actions upon selected colors, for seeking, kicking and goal-orientating. He has three main colors to recognize: The green of the playing field, the orange of the soccer ball, and the yellow of the field goal. 

“We tell him what colors are what using color table software, and basically he looks at the number of clusters with the color and the shape of the cluster, and then he decides, “Ok, this is the ball, and there’s the goal,” says Jack Newton, a rising senior in computer engineering from Blacksburg. “And he’ll line up and kick it.” 

Any bright blue, orange, red, or yellow off the field – such as the shirt of a spectator -- can throw a robot’s visual orientation off, depending on the robot. The DARwIn bots are programmed to look for a blue goal post, so if a person, say a photographer, wears blue jeans, he can be mistaken for a goal as both shapes would be blue, roundish and vertical. That’s why nearly all of the RoboCup participants opt for all-black attire. Other colors, such as black, or white, or gray, are received as noise, looking quite similar to static on a television set, or a black cut-out figure of empty space. 


Blue doesn’t matter for all the robots. In CHARLI’s case, he’s always kicking toward a yellow goal post as Adult-Sized League robots play single-goal kick soccer. So blue jeans, or a blue shirt, would show up as the same static. (We have yet to see anyone sport yellow pants.) 

Also forbidden near the soccer fields: Flash photography as the burst of light can confuse a robot’s sense of visual environment. Anyone who has been blinded by a flash during a performance or talk might agree.

Team DARwIn wins against Team RoBIU, 5-1

Video: CHARLI scores at RoboCup

On 21 June 2012 at RoboCup, CHARLI wins his first round of the day against team KW-1. 3-0. Behind CHARLI is Coleman Knabe of the Robotics and Mechanisms Laboratory. Up next for CHARLI: Taking on JoiTech at 3:30 Central. Also up for today: Team DARwIn at 2 p.m., versus Team Robiu, and at 4:30, versus Nubots.

Group portrait: How it was done

Getting together dozens of people, many of whom speak various languages, and their robots is a trick in and of itself. And not everyone made it as some team members, exhausted from their first day of games, slept through the gathering, their heads resting on crooked arms at their work tables. We made a quick video, the camera man standing upon a (creeky, old) chair, his camera held high above his head, as the RoboCup 2012 soccer competition teams assembled on a soccer field for a few moments. Look for Team RoMeLa, in center.