AUT-UofM humanoid TeenSize joint team; a new step toward 2050’s humanoid league long term roadmap

RoboCup is an important challenge problem in robotics. The goal of RoboCup is to build a team of humanoid robots that can beat the human world champion in 2050. More importantly, RoboCup acts as an important benchmark in developing useful and practical humanoid robots for society. An ongoing concern for RoboCup is the fact that as robots are getting ever more complex and the costs of developing a team of humanoid robots is increasing rapidly. As a result it becomes difficult for teams to participate in the RoboCup competitions. Few teams will be able to build eleven adult-sized humanoid robots to compete in 2050. This paper describes a practical and tested way for developing a team of humanoid robots with full collaboration amongst the team members. This helps in reducing the costs of developing a team. The AUT-UofM team found out that developing a joint team is easier than trying to build one individually. The collaboration between Amirkabir University of Technology, Iran and the University of Manitoba, Canada started in 2014. The joint team project overcame great challenges in fostering collaboration between teams separated by geography, culture, and politics. We achieved the creation of a novel Teen-Size humanoid robot design, generated a new analytical walking engine good balance and push recovery and improved previous monocular vision-based localization. This research is based on experiences of both universities provided from long time participation in RoboCup humanoid league in recent years.