Awards
2023-08-10
Team Hector wins several awards and the 2nd place at the RoboCup Rescue 2023 held in Bordeaux
In addition to the 2nd in the overall scoring, Team Hector also won the awards for “Best in Class Autonomy”, for the most points scored in autonomous operation, “Technology Challenge Award” for innovative technologies, and Best Team Description Paper.
2023-06-15
Team Hector: Best in Class Radiation Mapping Award at EnRicH 2023
2023-05-11
Team Hector wins again the first place in the overall ranking at the RoboCup Rescue German Open 2023.
The team also won the categories “Best in Class Autonomy” for the most autonomously performed tasks and “Best in Class Mobility” for the best performance in overcoming difficult terrain
2022-08-01
3rd place in the Rescue Robot League for the TU Darmstadt team
Team Hector :secures 3rd place in the overall ranking of the RoboCup Rescue Robot League with rescue robot Asterix in the 2022 World Championship. In addition, the team led by computer science professor Oskar von Stryk received the “Best-in-Class Exploration and Mapping Standard Test” awards.
2021-10-08
Team Hector: Best in Class 3D Mapping Award and Best in Class Radiation Mapping Award (Shared with Fraunhofer FKIE) at Enrich 2021
2021-09-30
Team Hector wins the first place at RoboCup German Open 2021
The final mission was a simulated accident in a chemical lab and we successfully performed various challenging tasks such as
  • sealing a heated container
  • navigation through smoke
  • traversal of debris
  • autonomous detection of hazmat signs
Thanks to Deutsches Rettungsrobotik-Zentrum – DRZ. for hosting an exciting competition.
2021-07-01
The rescue robot team Hector won the Best-in-Class Awards in the categories “Dexterity” and “Exploration and Mapping” at the 2021 RoboCup World Championship in the Rescue Robot League. This is a great success for the whole team. We are looking forward to competing with all teams together at RoboCup 2022 in Thailand!
2019-11-28
Alexander Stumpf, Martin Oehler and Dr.-Ing. Jérôme Kirchhoff receive the Athene Award for Good Teaching 2019 for the development of the innovative lecture-accompanying programming project “TurtleBot Challenge”. Congratulations!
2019-07-07
In the RoboCup World Championship in Sydney, Australia, our Team Hector wins by a large margin the Best-in-Class Autonomy Award for the most intelligent rescue robot of the Rescue Robot League (as in many years before). It was furthermore awarded the Outdoor Carry Bot Award and the 3rd Place in the overall competition despite a significantly less capable robot hardware compared to the competitors (see report).
2019-07-05
At the 2nd edition of the European ENRICH Robotics Competition our Team Hector wins again the award for the best autonomous mapping of radioactive sources in a nuclear power plant in Zwentendorf, Austria.
2019-06-07
Our start-up project “Freemotion Systems” was awarded one of the Top 5 awards of the Science4Life Venture Cup.
2018-10-21
Our Team Hector wins the Plant Disaster Prevention Challenge at the World Robot Summit held from October 17-21, 2018, in Tokyo hosted by Japanese Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) and New Energy Industrial Technology Development Organization (NEDO).
2018-06-21
At RoboCup 2018 in Montreal our Team Hector wins the Best-in-Class Exploration, Best-in-Class Small Robot and Best-in-Class Outdoor CarryBot Awards of the Rescue Robot League.
2018-04-29
Team Hector wins the Best-in-Class Autonomy Award for the most intelligent rescue robot at RoboCup German Open 2018.
2018-04-24
Our start-up concept Freemotion Systems was awarded one out of six first prizes from 170 submissions to the start-up competition Digital Innovations of the Federal BMWi.
2017-11-15
Congratulations to Karim Barth for the Datenlotsen Award 2017 for his bachelor thesis
2017-07-31
The paper Real-time online adaptive feedforward velocity control for unmanned vehicles by Nicolai Ommer, Alexander Stumpf et al. receives the Best Paper Award for Scientific Contribution of the RoboCup 2017 Symposium.
2017-07-30
Team Hector wins again the Best MicroAerial Robot Award of the Rescue Robot League at RoboCup 2017 in Nagoya, Japan, and misses the Best Exploration Award only by few points due to hardware problems.
2017-06-22
Our Team Hector wins the first edition of the European ENRICH Robotics Competition the first price for the best mapping of radioactive sources in an abandoned nuclear power plant.
2017-05-12
Our Team ARGONAUTS has just won the ARGOS Challenge which is the by far most complex and demanding scenario for intelligent robots in industrial plants!
2016-07-03
Team Hector wins Best MicroAerial Robot Award of the Rescue Robot League. Although it arrived only very few days before the competition, Team Hector also managed to use their new tracked mobile robot successfully in the competition. However, the time for preparation was too short for being able to defend the previously won titles. Furthermore, demonstrations for humanoid rescue robot tasks have been successfully performed with robot Johnny.
2016-05-19
The paper Human-Robot Collaborative High-Level Control with Application to Rescue Robotics by P. Schillinger, S. Kohlbrecher et al. has been awarded Finalist for the prestigious Best Human-Robot Interaction (HRI) Paper Award at the 2016 IEEE ICRA 2016 in Stockholm. Congratulations!
2015-10-06
On Oct 6th, 2015, Bionic Robotics GmbH was awarded the handling award 2015 of the professional journal handling in the category Automization and Robotics in recognition of the development of the innovative lightweight robot BioRob for human-machine-collaboration
2015-07-22
RoboCup 2015 in Hefei: Team Hector wins Best in Class Autonomy Award for the most intelligent rescue robot for the 4th time in a row and receives Innovative User Interface Award for the joint mapping ability with multiple robots
2015-05-06
The PhD thesis of Dr.-Ing. Kati Radkhah has received the 2015 Award of the Association of Friends of TU Darmstadt for excellent scientific achievements.
2015-03-01
Our Teams Hector and ViGIR both qualified for the Final Competition of the prestigious DARPA Robotics Challenge. This makes us the only research group worldwide that will be at the start with 2 teams..
2014-11-08
Bionic Robotics GmbH receives Enterprise Award of the 35th Forum KIEDRICH Founders Market.
2014-07-25
For the first time and as the first German team, Team Hector wins the 2014 RoboCup Rescue Robot League in Joao Pessoa, Brazil. In addition, the Best in Class Autonomy Award was obtained for the third time in a row.
2014-04-05
After a strong comeback in the competition, Team Hector comes in first at RoboCup GermanOpen in Magdeburg and wins RoboCup Rescue Robot League as well as Best-in-Class Autonomy Award for the most intelligent rescue robot for the fourth time in a row.
2013-07-11
Team ViGIR (TORC Robotics, TU Darmstadt, Virginia Tech) receives Atlas, one of the most advanced humanoid robots in the world, for development as rescue robot! Press reports: DARPA, IEEE Spectrum, TU Darmstadt (in German).
2013-06-30
Eindhoven: Team Hector wins Best-in-Class Autonomy Award for the most intelligent robot of the RoboCup Rescue Robot League World Championship 2013 (for the second time in a row).
2013-06-27
Big success for Team ViGIR (TORC Robotics, TU Darmstadt, Virginia Tech) in the Virtual DARPA Robotics Challenge: Top 6 from more than hundred teams worldwide! Press report: IEEE Spectrum, TU Darmstadt (in German).
2013-04-29
April 28, 2013, Magdeburg: Hector SLAM receives first HARTING Open-Source Award.
2013-04-28
April 28, 2013, Magdeburg, RoboCup GermanOpen: Search and rescue robot team Hector wins Rescue Robot League for the third time in a row as well as the Best in Class Autonomy Award.
2012-07-03
July 3, 2012: Master Thesis of Jérôme Kirchhoff awarded prize of Darmstadt Foundation for Technology Transfer.
2012-06-24
June 18-23, RoboCup, Mexico City: Team Hector wins Best in Class Autonomy Award, 2nd overall place and Innovation Award in Rescue Robot League, Darmstadt Dribblers win 3rd place in Humanoid KidSize League.
2011-11-08
Nov 8, 2011: Robotic arm BioRob selected as landmark in the nation-wide competition Land of Ideas.
2011-07-26
July 10, 2011, RoboCup, Istanbul: Darmstadt Dribblers win 1st place in technical challenge and 3rd place (out of 24) in soccer games, Team Hector ranked 2nd (out of 17) in Best in Class Autonomy Category, Videos.
2011-04-15
Feb. 2011: Best Paper Award for Karen Petersen at the 4th International Conference on Advances in Computer-Human Interactions (ACHI).
2011-04-03
2011/04/03, RoboCup GermanOpen 2011: Team Hector wins RoboCup Rescue League and Best in Class Autonomy Award; Darmstadt Dribblers win Humanoid KidSize League making TU Darmstadt the most successful university in this event.
2011-02-01
Feb 1, 2011: The BioRob GmbH was selected as a landmark in the “Land of Ideas” and will be presented on Nov 8, 2011.
2010-10-26
2010/10/26: Juliane Kuhn receives Datenlotsen Award for her thesis.
2010-06-24
June 24, 2010, Singapore: Autonomous humanoid robots of the Darmstadt Dribblers impressively defend their RoboCup world champion title against 23 international teams: 8 wins in 8 games, 74:2 goal difference,videos, twitter.
2010-04-19
April 18, 2010: Darmstadt Rescue Robot Team Hector wins 2nd place at RoboCup GermanOpen.
2010-01-16
Dec. 2009, IEEE ROBIO, Guilin: Paper of Kati Radkhah and Stefan Kurowski Finalist for Best Paper in Biomimetics
2009-10-12
Oct 3, 2009: Excellent 3rd place for Darmstadt Rescue Robot Team Hector as newcomer within 12 European teams at SICK Robot Day.
2009-09-07
Sept 7, 2009, Kassel: BioRob robot arm project receives Hessian University-SME cooperation award (in German).
2009-07-05
July 5, 2009, Graz, Austria: Autonomous, humanoid robots of the Darmstadt Dribblers blew away all opponents at RoboCup: World Champion (8 wins in 8 games, 78:3 goal difference), Louis Vuitton Best Humanoid Award (as first non Japanese team), 1. Place Technical Challenge.
2009-05-14
Kati Radkhah has been awarded the Google Anita Borg Memorial Scholarship 2009.
2009-04-08
April 5, 2009: Darmstadt Dribblers win RoboCup Iran Open through 7:3 in the final against FUmanoid!
2009-04-08
April 7, 2009, Leuven: BioRob robot arm project wins 1st price of the prestigeous European EURON/EUROP Robotics Technology Transfer Award!
2008-11-08
3rd place for the poster of Sebastian Klug at the Bionik Konkress of GTBB in Bremen.
2008-11-07
Best Paper Award for Martin Friedmann and Karen Petersen at 1st International Conference on SIMULATION, MODELING, and PROGRAMMING for AUTONOMOUS ROBOTS (SIMPAR) Nov 3-7, 2008, Venice, Italy
2008-07-25
RoboCup 2008 in China: Darmstadt Dribbling Dackels as GermanTeam world champion of the Four-Legged Robot League after 5:0 win in the final game! Darmstadt Dribblers reach excellent 2. place out of 24 teams at the Humanoid Robot Technical Challenge.
2008-07-21
Werner von Siemens Excellence Award 2008 for the diploma thesis of Kati Radkhah.
2008-04-11
April 2008, RoboCup German Open and Hannover Messe: 1. place for Dribbling Dackels (as GermanTeam), 3. place for Darmstadt Dribblers; exhibition of our new bionic robot arm and our new autonomous four-legged robot at the thematic stand Bionics.
2007-12-06
The founding idea “New Generation of Robots” has been awarded the 2nd place at the UniTechSpin founding competition 2007.
2007-09-21
Best Poster Presentation Award for Thomas Hemker at the Czech-French-German Conference on Optimization.
2007-07-08
RoboCup 2007: GermanTeam takes 1st place in Technical Challenge, Darmstadt Dribblers lost very tight and dramatic quarter final vs. the later champion.
2006-06-21
The Darmstadt Dribblers (autonomous humanoid robots) earn at RoboCup 2006: a 2nd and two 3rd places as well as 27 scored goals plus a plentitude of innovations..
2006-05-05
Darmstadt Dribblers & Hajime Team win Best Humanoid Robot Price at the RoboCup Japan Open 2006, May 4-6.
2006-04-03
Dribbling Dackelsat the RoboCup Dutch Open, April 7-9: “only” 3rd place in soccer games but 1st place in the technical challenge for the overall best team.
2005-07-16
RoboCup: GermanTeam World Champion 2005 after dramatic penalty-kick shoot-out!
2004-07-05
RoboCup 2004 in Lisabon: Darmstadt Dribbling Dackels with German Team are World Champion 2004!