HU team takes third place at the German Robot Football Championship
Despite facing unexpected challenges at the RoboCup German Open in Cologne, the “Berlin United” team was successful
The German Open 2026 Robot Football Championship took place from 10 to 14 March at the Cologne Exhibition Centre and presented particular challenges for the HU team’s four football robots on the pitch – yet “Berlin United” secured third place in the Humanoid Soccer League (small size category). “Our NAO robots had to master many unexpected tasks on the pitch,” reports team leader Heinrich Mellmann from the Institute of Computer Science at HU, who has been involved since 2004. “The artificial turf was taller than normally stipulated in the rules, which made running and shooting more unstable, and the spray-painted line markings were difficult for the robots to recognise, making it harder for them to navigate the pitch.” Furthermore, the HU robots had to play not only against other NAOs, as is usually the case, but against football robots of various sizes. Alongside Mellmann, the twelve-strong “Berlin United” team also included students and alumni from HU.
Humanoid robots play completely autonomously
The 60-cm-tall humanoid robots named NAO, developed by the French company Maxtronics, have been programmed since 2008 by the research group led by Verena Hafner, Professor of Adaptive Systems at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin (HU). The soccer robots regularly compete in RoboCup tournaments against teams from Germany and around the world.
In the RoboCup Humanoid Soccer League, the robots play football as a team completely autonomously. In doing so, they must perform a variety of tasks, including visual perception, bipedal locomotion, decision-making and coordination with their teammates. The annual German championship, the ‘German Open’, is the world’s second-largest RoboCup competition. This year, the ‘German Open’ took place in conjunction with the ‘2nd German Robotics Conference’ and was held under the patronage of the Federal Minister for Research, Technology and Space, Dorothee Bär.
World Championship in South Korea this summer
This year’s RoboCup World Championship will take place from 30 June to 6 July in Incheon, South Korea. “Berlin United will of course be there and is already preparing intensively for the championship,” said team leader Mellmann. “With our success at the German Open, we are well positioned.”
Contact:
Berlin United – NaoTH RoboCup Team
Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin
Department of Computer Science
Adaptive Systems
Rudower Chaussee 25, 12489 Berlin
+49 30 2093-41173
berlin-united.informatik(at)lists.hu-berlin.de
berlin-united.org
HU press release, 26.03.2026