Fontys goes to Brazil: tackling our first challenge at the RoboCup World Championship 2025

Hello from sunny Salvador, Brazil! We are excited to report that our student team Robohub from Fontys Engineering Eindhoven has arrived and is ready to compete in the RoboCup 2025 World Championship!

Fontys students in Brazil

It’s an amazing feeling to be here, representing not only our university, but also the hard work of our entire team. While there are four of us on the ground in Brazil—students Sem, Bram, and Irven, along with our coach and Mechatronics teacher Ronald Scheer—we are carrying the ambition and dedication of our full 20-person robotics team from the engineering faculty in Eindhoven. This journey has been a massive collaborative effort, and we’re so proud to be the ones showcasing our work on this global stage.

For the Fontys community following along, this is more than just a competition for us. It’s a chance to stand alongside the world’s brightest minds in robotics, to learn, to innovate, and to show what Fontys talent can achieve.

About RoboCup

For those who are new to our journey, you might be wondering what RoboCup is all about. RoboCup is a prestigious international competition that brings together the brightest minds in robotics to solve real-world problems. While it’s famous for robot soccer, it also features leagues dedicated to rescue missions, home assistance, and, in our case, industrial applications.

We are competing in RoboCup@Work, a league that challenges teams to build autonomous robots for factory and warehouse environments. The competition is designed to push the boundaries of robotics in areas like mobile manipulation, automation, and human-robot cooperation.

The First Hurdle: The Basic Manipulation Test (BMT)

Every team in RoboCup@Work, including ours, starts with the Basic Manipulation Test (BMT). As the name suggests, this is the foundational challenge that every robot must tackle. It’s designed to test the most fundamental skills of a mobile manipulator: recognizing, picking up, and placing objects.

Here’s a simple breakdown of what the BMT involves:

• The Goal: The robot’s task is to move specific objects from a starting location (the “source”) to a target location.
• The Arena: The test takes place in a designated area with two nearby workstations. There are no complex obstacles, decoys, or varied surfaces in this initial test, keeping the focus purely on manipulation.
• The Objects: For the BMT, the objects are pre-selected and known to the teams. According to the rulebook, these are typically items like aluminum profiles, nuts, and bolts. While we know what the objects are, their exact position and orientation on the starting table are random, meaning our robot has to identify and adapt to them on the fly.

The BMT is the first step to ensure a robot has the core capabilities needed for the more complex challenges that lie ahead. A successful run in the BMT demonstrates that a robot can see the world around it, understand what it needs to do, and physically interact with its environment—all without any human intervention. We’re incredibly proud of the entire team for making this possible. The atmosphere here is electric, and we can’t wait to make our teammates proud.

Embracing AI, On and Off the Field

As a team at the forefront of technology, we don’t just build robots; we build them with the tools that are shaping the future of the industry. Our robot’s intelligence is powered by a robust software stack, including AI. More about our software in our next blog.

But our use of AI doesn’t stop with the robot. We also believe in working smarter in how we share our journey with you. That’s why we’re using:

• Claude AI
• OpenAI
• Perplexity
• and Manus AI

to help us with our marketing and communication. From drafting blog posts like this one to generating ideas for social media, AI-tools help us tell our story more effectively, allowing us to stay focused on the competition while keeping our supporters in the loop. It’s a perfect example of how AI can enhance human creativity and productivity.

Stay tuned for more updates from Salvador!