Australia wins World RoboCup soccer

A team from UNSW beat Germany to win RoboCup 2014 overnight.

The UNSW robot football team, rUNSWift, competed in the standard platform league of RoboCup, the world’s largest robot competition, against 19 other teams from around the world.

In the electrifying final rUNSWift were galvanised into action after Nao – Team HTWK from Leipzig University of Applied Sciences took early possession.

The UNSW team struck back with an early goal and kept up the pressure to defeat their rivals 5-1. The previous winners, German team B-Human, took third place.

“We were ecstatic to beat B-Human in the semi-final yesterday after seven years of trying,” said Brad Hall from the School of Computer Science and Engineering, who is in Brazil with the team.

The UNSW robots were ruthless in their march to the finals, racking up 37 goals against their opponents with no goals conceded.

“Unfortunately, during the final, after our goalie saved an attempt, he fell over and while trying to get back up and in position we conceded the only goal during the entire competition,” said Hall.

“To win the overall tournament, as well as the demo ‘All-Stars vs Champions’, wrapped up a great year,” he said.

“Some of our longer-serving team members can now retire from the league with big smiles on their faces.  For our new members, I hope they are inspired to help us defend the title next year in China.”

Australia’s been on a bit of a roll these last few weeks with the RoboCup win coming on top of gold medals in the Maths and Informatics Olympiads.