TIGERS Mannheim
(Team Interacting and Game Evolving Robots)
Team Description for RoboCup 2013
Andre Ryll, Nicolai Ommer, Daniel Andres, Dirk Klostermann, Sebastian
Nickel, Felix Pistorius
Department of Information Technology, Department of Mechanical Engineering
Baden-Wuerttemberg Cooperative State University,
Coblitzallee 1-9, 68163 Mannheim, Germany
management@tigers-mannheim.de
http://www.tigers-mannheim.de
Abstract. This paper presents a brief technical overview of the main
systems of TIGERS Mannheim, a Small Size League (SSL) team intend-
ing to participate in RoboCup 2013 in Eindhoven, the Netherlands. This
year, we redesigned our bots' mechanic and electronic to improve overall
precision and to add new features. Our software showed very reliable
and stable, so we could concentrate on some improvements in the arti-
cial intelligence. One main module is a learning play nder that uses a
knowledge base to determine a play set for the current situations.
1 Mechanical System
In the last two years our rst robot design has shown some serious mechanical
problems. To overcome these issues we decided to build a new robot from scratch.
The old and the new robot are shown in gure 1. The mechanical specications
are listed in table 1.
The old robot had two main problems. First, we underestimated the power
of the kicking device and the forces during a shot. The straight kicker connection
from solenoid to plunger was only 3mm in diameter. The thin connection bent
regularly and even the threads used in the parts were vaporized to ne aluminum
powder after some shots. The dribbling bar had a similar problem. In close
contact situations with other robots our dribbling bar bent and made precise
dribbling impossible. The second major problem which is not only limited to the
mechanical construction was the overall precision of our system.
To improve the mechanical precision we reduced the diameter of the wheels
by moving the transversal rollers more inward to the center of the wheel. Fur-
thermore we changed from an external spur gear with a ration of 30 : 100 to an
internal spur gear with a ration of 15 : 50. This signicantly reduces the height
of robots drive unit and thus gives more space for capacitors and electronics. It
also moves the mass center down which helps accelerating the robot faster. The