Standard Platform League

Standard Platform League (SPL)

In the Standard Platform League, soccer is played with a standardized robot platform, i.e. all teams use the same hardware and only differ in the software they develop. For the ninth time at the RoboCup German Open, the humanoid robot NAO, manufactured by the company SoftBank Robotics, is used as standard platform.

NAO is equipped with up to 25 actuated joints. In its head, two cameras are integrated for perceiving the environment. In its chest, sonar sensors measure distances and gyroscopes and accelerometers allow determining the torso’s pose. In the feet there are sensors to measure ground contact and the contact with the ball. Teams of five robots play against each other on a 9 x 6 m² sized field. The robots are completely autonomous. However, through Wi-Fi, they can communicate with each other and receive the decisions of the referee.

This year, many teams will participate with the new NAO version 6 in the RoboCup German Open for the first time. The computer integrated in the new model is significantly more powerful than the one built into its predecessor. The rules get continuously closer to the ones of human soccer. This year, two further sets plays are introduced, namely the corner kick and the throw-in (actually kick-in), which makes the team play more challenging. At the same time, the usable Wi-Fi bandwidth for the communication between the robots is again reduced by two thirds, which requires team agreements to be much more concise.

B-Human, Universität Bremen & Deutsches Forschungszentrum für Künstliche Intelligenz (Germany)
Bembelbots, Goethe-Universität Frankfurt (Germany)
Berlin United, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin (Germany)
HULKs, Hamburg University of Technology (Germany)
Nao Devils, TU Dortmund (Germany)
Nao-Team HTWK, HTWK Leipzig (Germany)
NomadZ, ETH Zürich (Switzerland)
rUNSWift, University of New South Wales (Australia)
Starkit SPL, Moscow institute of physics and technology (Russia)


see the game schedule

Final Results

Final results of this league

League Chair

Dr. Thomas Röfer (DFKI Bremen)


Actual SPL Rules