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Team whIRLwind wins first place at Italian RoboCup

5 November 2026

The UvA robot football team whIRLwind has won first place at the first Italian Open RoboCup Humanoid Soccer Tournament in Rome on 28 October. The team won all games, both in the preliminaries and finals. In the preliminaries the team played four versus four matches, where in the final games they played with a full five robots against team FOOMBOT from Warsaw and the HULKS from Hamburg. The extra robot allowed them to demonstrate their superior teamplay on a large field, resulting in a convincing 5-0 win with a last second goal.
Rewatch the full final match here

Technical challenges

One of the challenges team whIRLwind encountered in Rome was that they had to play outside, in both sunny and windy circumstances. The field was covered by a tent-roof but was open to the elements at the side. Apart from that, the team had to maintain accurate whistle detection even with large crowds and good localization with faded lines as the matches continued. During the tournament, the team improved several parts of their codebase. The robot’s improved behavior includes their new dribbling technique, walking into the free space better, passing the ball accurately over long distances and receiving these passes.

European competition

The whIRLwind team was invited by the Italian team SPQR, which played in the competition with larger humanoid robots, so it was not a direct competitor. In the large-size division three teams showed up, from China, Germany and Italy. It was won by CAU Mountain & Sea from Beijing.

Team whIRLwind played in the middle-size division with 6 teams, from Germany, Poland, Ireland and one Dutch team. It had to qualify against two German teams in the preliminaries, followed by a semi-final and final. Throughout all matches, the team conceded just one point, while scoring nineteen points.

Maker Faire

The RoboCup Italian Open was co-located with the European edition of the Maker Faire, and attracted more than 55,000 visitors interested in the latest technologies and DIY projects.