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Mission Statement

Research groups at the three universities of technology in the Netherlands, have agreed to join efforts in creating humanoid robots, cooperating in the Dutch Robotics initiative.

This initiative is an integral part of the 3TU Centre for Intelligent Mechatronic Systems. This Centre was founded in February 2007 by 3TU, the federation of the three universities of technology in the Netherlands.

The Dutch Robotics project is part of a long term vision shared by the three Dutch universities and the Dutch industry for the development of a new generation of robots. While robots have been working in controlled environments in factories for more than fifty years, this new generation of robots will become affordable and sufficiently autonomous for use in households. The market for domestic robots is expanding slowly, and 3TU is on the forefront of developing this technology in the Netherlands.

The main challenges in the development of this new generation of robots are:

  • Control of a large number of degrees of freedom
  • Interaction with complex and dynamic environments
  • Safety issues in environments in which people are present
  • Handling a host of different tasks

To face these challenges, the research groups will gradually increase the complexity of the environments in which their robots operate, and of the tasks that their robots perform.

Dutch Robotics' first milestone was to build robots that competed in RoboCup Soccer 2008, in Suzhou, China. Last summer, the team competed in Graz, Austria. This year, we are further developing these robots, and will try to compete in the AdultSize Humanoid League of Robocup 2010 in Singapore. In the Humanoid league, robots with human-like bodies and human-like sensing compete. Each year, the Robocup organisation changes the rules to make it closer to a real soccer game, and the teams face more complex design requirements, and build more advanced robots.

By taking up challenges such as RobocupSoccer, Dutch Robotics will develop techniques to enhance the vision, lightweight design, actuation control and the intelligence of humanoid robots.