Feature Friday No. 15 – Iceberg Robots

Welcome back to the 15th episode of our Feature Friday! This week we want to introduce you to three young men and their robotics team “Iceberg Robots” which we have been supporting with 3D print jobs for their next challenge.

Three weeks ago Finn, Lorenz and Nicolas, three students from the Käthe Kollwitz High School, came into our store and asked us for our help. But not for an ordinary school project. No, the boys were working on two soccer robots for the RoboCup Junior finals 2016. Together with their third team member Lorenz they won the 3rd prize at the regional RoboCup Junior that took place in Berlin on the 5./6. of March so that they qualified themselves for the Germany-wide finals.

Watch this video from their qualification tournament in Berlin. It is impressive how fast and agile these robots are!

After the game is before the game

Surprised by their success and excited about the finals that are going to take place in Magdeburg from the 29th of April to the 1st of May, they have been working ever since, every minute of their free time, on the improvement of their robots. As their team’s name and logo already indicates, building the robot housing is only the tip of the iceberg. “The strategy is the most crucial element for the success at the RoboCup” says Finn, who explained that they have to anticipate numerous possible situations and program every strategic move in advance since the manual control during the game is prohibited. The progamming is in Arduino language and consists of 2000 lines of code and can be up to 5000 lines. Finn explained that they keep an eye on their competitors tactics so that they can pre-programme the strategy for different opponents.

A working robot is not everything

But after several participations over the last 5 years a working robot was not enough for them anymore. For the first time they considered the design as well and therefore they wanted to have a custom-built sensor plate that should be placed on the top of the robots. The plates should have fixtures for a compass, to help the robots to navigate on the field, and for a infrared sensors, which are the robots’ eyes. Furthermore they needed holes for several switches, buttons, as well as for a display. In order to clearly distinguish the keeper- from the striker-robot, they wanted the plates to be marked with an “A” and a “B”. Last but not least their school’s name and their logo should give their robots a final design element. And that is what we supported them with. Following their plan we helped them to prepare the .stl file for printing and produced the two plates with our Next Generation XXL 3D Printer from Sharebot including two backup plates.

Together with 172 other German teams, Finn, Nicolas, and Lorenz will test their skills in Magdeburg and we wish them all the best! We really hope that Iceberg Robots are going to win and qualify themselves for the 20th RoboCup World Championship in Leipzig.

You can read the report about the qualification game here.

If you also have an exciting project you need help with text, call, or visit us. We would be glad to support you!

Enjoy your weekend and see you next Friday to a new episode.