NimbRo-OP, with a length of 95 cm and weight 6,6 kg, is a robot which is specifically developed to play football. Computer scientists from Bonn University announced this new robot at IROS (International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems) Conferance in Portugal. They states to compete in RoboCup, is a robotic competition which is organized every year.

This litte robot can convert the computer commands into the mechanical ones by 20 terminal driver elements. Then it creates a perfect motion during the match. It can run, walk, shoot the goal and do lots of movements. Even if it falls, it can get up like a human and continue playing.

Prof. Dr. Sven Behnke, lead of the Autonomous Intelligent Systems working group from the University of Bonn states that NimbRo-OP’s code is open source. It is developed in this way just so that all developer groups can develop NimbRo-OP. Not only software developers but also hardware developers can also work on this open source robotic device.

Behnke also admits that there are a lot of  humanoid robots which influence them in the process of developing NimbRo-OP but the sizes of these robots smaller. Although being smaller seems to have more advantage, actually it is not true. In order to make certain movements having big size makes it easier and more successful.

Bonn researchers emphasize this robot is not developed for commerce and users, just for developers. They do not find it suitable to “play”. For this reason, they prefer to be a participant in RoboCup. Hence, lots of developers can meet this new technology.

Despite all these works, Bahnke confesses that NimbRo-OP is not a good player as much as humans because there are too much things to be considered. The human brain is amazing, it can get all inputs and return a quick output command then turn it a motion after considering all of them. Being a team-mate or against, the position and location of ball, the distance from the goalpost to the ball etc. However Bonn University computer scientists believe it will be the best in RoboCup.

To get more information about NimbRo-OP : http://www.ais.uni-bonn.de/nimbro/OP

Source : http://phys.org/news/2012-10-future-soccer-robot.html

  NimbRo-OP, robocup, soccer robot