HULKs.de - RoboCup HSL Team, Hamburg University of Technology

HULKs

Hi, we're the HULKs! We are a team of students from the Hamburg University of Technology competing in the RoboCup Humanoid Soccer League, founded in 2013.

Our robots run a custom robotics framework written from scratch in Rust, and our development process and code is completely open. Beyond the development of robotics code, we seek to make robotics, software engineering, and artificial intelligence more accessible to the public by hosting conferences, talks, and workshops.

Find Us

Lab: Schloßmühlendamm 30 (Entrance), Room 319 (3rd Floor)
Contact: [email protected]

RoboCup 2026

In summer 2026, the HULKs traveled to Incheon, South Korea, to compete in the RoboCup Humanoid Soccer League. Following the league merger, teams from the former Standard Platform and Humanoid Leagues competed together in a larger and more diverse field.

In preparation for the event, we migrated to a new software stack and introduced a new behavior system, a 3D localization pipeline, and a substantially improved vision system. Implementing so many changes at once made the competition particularly demanding, but it also taught us valuable lessons and demonstrated the potential of our new platform. Unfortunately, unresolved integration issues prevented us from reaching our full capabilities in time, and we did not qualify for the knockout stage.

The event also marked a major milestone in robot soccer, featuring the first 11-on-11 match between humanoid robots. Seeing how far the field had progressed in just one year made us even more excited about its future.

German Open 2026

The HULKs took part in the German Open 2026 in Cologne. This was the first event where teams from the former RoboCup Standard Platform League and Humanoid League competed together in the new RoboCup Humanoid Soccer League.

For this season, we transitioned from the NAO to the Booster K1, marking a significant step forward in our humanoid robotics journey. Although ongoing integration challenges across many teams limited the action on the field, we made substantial progress and even scored several goals. We were ultimately eliminated in a penalty shootout against team WhIRLWind. Nevertheless, we are proud of our performance and excited to explore what will be possible with the Booster K1 platform.

RoboCup 2025

In July, we traveled to Salvador, Brazil to compete in this year's RoboCup.

This season we introduced several new features and improvements, including MPC step planning and enhanced field color detection.

The competition began with some rocky matches as we worked through bugs in our newly developed features. However we were able to finish the event - and with this the NAO era - on a high note playing a final game with excellent walking performance and precise localization and by scoring second in the Technical Challenge.

We now look forward to the next season where we will compete in the newly formed Humanoid Soccer League with the Booster K1 platform.

German Open 2025

In this years' German Open in Nuremberg, we managed to secure the second place, our best result yet. We were able to finish major improvements to our vision and behavior code in time for the competition, and fixed a large number of bugs.

Our main focus for the upcoming RoboCup this summer remains walking stability, which proved to be a major weakness on the field.

If you want to join us for our exciting journey and see the results of our work, come see us at RoboCup 2025 in Salvador, Brazil. You can find more information at the event's website.

RoboCup 2024

This summer, we finished 4th in the RoboCup competition in Eindhoven, Netherlands.

This competition saw the introduction of various large features, such as a brand-new replayer tool, visual referee detection, and additional energy-saving measures.

Walking stability was our main weakness during the competition, and we started working on multiple large features which aim to improve it.

German Open 2024

From the 17th to the 21st of April, the team HULKs participated in the German Open 2024 to compete against some German as well as international teams. A large portion of the competition was focused on adjusting to the new rule changes this year, focusing on the robots recognizing visual signals from the referee, as well as requiring more passing between robots.

Continuing to build on the new Rust framework from 2 years ago, team HULKs is focusing on more stability during the games. In the previous season, we were able to achieve the 4th place at RoboCup 2023 in Bordeaux. However, during our games our robots walked into each other and fell over because of this. For this reason, we are working on a new robot detection and a higher walking stability. We are also developing smarter behavioral algorithms.

RoHOW

Participants at the Robotic Hamburg Open Workshop

Since 2014, we are anually hosting the Robotic Hamburg Open Workshop (RoHOW).

The RoHOW is an event hosted by the Hamburg University of Technology that serves the purpose of education and networking. Over 100 scientists and students from all over the world who are researching in the field of humanoid robotics participate in this event.

The goal of this event is the exchange of information between RoboCup teams from different universities and research institutes. Participants have the opportunity to visit lectures and workshops, challenge other teams in competitions, and get in direct contact with each other.

More information on https://rohow.de.