RoboTeam Twente: The Future of Autonomous Football

RoboTeam Twente

RoboTeam Twente, a group of students from the University of Twente and Saxion University of Applied Sciences, focuses on autonomous football robots. They specialize in designing and developing these machines, aiming to promote innovation in the fields of robotics and artificial intelligence (AI). Beyond robot A, the team engages in talks, workshops, and various events to showcase the potential of AI and robotics.

RoboCup

An annual highlight for RoboTeam Twente is participating in the RoboCup, the global tournament in robotics. Specifically, the team competes in the football league, using small-sized robots. The ultimate goal of the RoboCup is to challenge a human football team with robots by the mid-21st century.

The RoboCup distinguishes itself by emphasizing innovation. Teams share their best advancements through papers, encouraging knowledge exchange and pushing boundaries. Many teams, including RoboTeam Twente, contribute to this collaborative spirit by making their designs and code open source, inviting wider community participation. The RoboCup thus serves as a platform for progress in robotics, fostering a practical and cooperative approach to AI and robotics development.

Collaboration with Eurocircuits

This year, the electronics team at RoboTeam Twente has been quite ambitious. It was deemed necessary to redesign the entire electronic hardware of the Robots. We have been able to depend upon Eurocircuits for fast and high-quality production of our PCBs. This year’s team is highly dependent on the excellent service Eurocircuits provides as delays in production reduce testing and prototyping time. We aim to make reliable hardware, so having a reliable partner like Eurocircuits is a must.

Motherboard

The new motherboard is now fully standalone. It includes new features for debugging such as an OLED display. This makes testing on-site and in the workshop that much easier. The implementation of a CAN bus is what allows the motherboard to be fully standalone. New modules (other boards) can be connected via this interface. This allows for easy upgradability; adding a CAN connection to new boards allows for their connection to the rest of the system.

Power board

This year’s power board is a complete power distribution module. It acts to provide power to the connected module in the system and ensures no damage ensues from supply failure. Its MCU can be interfaced with via the CAN bus mentioned above. The MCU on board allows for control over the battery protection units and can retrieve information about the batteries’ voltage level. This can all be relayed to the motherboard allowing for precise system control.

Moving forward

As we continue with our redesign, we feel secure in knowing that we can always rely on Eurocircuits to provide excellent service when fulfilling our needs. In the following months, prototyping of the remaining boards will take place in preparation for our first tournament in April. If you are interested in following our progress as we prepare for the RoboCup follow our updates on Social Media!