CITEC

IISY Symposium 2026 takes place at CITEC on March 25th

2026-03-24T09:43:09+01:00

We are happy to invite you to our annual IISY Symposium, which will take place on March 25 at CITEC. During the symposium, 19 student project groups will present their work across two presentation sessions and one poster session. We are also pleased to announce that Team TOBI from RoboCup Homecoming 2026 will present a live demo as part of the IISY Symposium.

RoboCup World Cup 2027 is coming to Germany!

2025-07-22T10:43:45+02:00

The RoboCup World Cup 2027 is coming back to Germany! RoboCup is one of the largest world-wide initiatives for robotics and artificial intelligence. More than 2.000 participants from around 45 countries will get together to show exceptional performances in robot soccer, rescue robotics, industrial robotics, and robots at home. The event will take place in Nuremberg in June/July, 2027, All Supporters and sponsors for our team ToBI are very welcome!

Successful Homecoming of RoboCup@Home Team ToBI

2025-04-08T12:22:42+02:00

On April 3, the RoboCup@Home team ToBI from the Faculty of Technology and CITEC presented their results and experiences from the German Open in Nuremberg. The Vicechampion showed an impressive demonstration of the robot preparing a party in a home arena built up in the CITEC Foyer. About 50 guests consisting of students, researchers, and industry partners celebrated with the team of students and CITEC researchers. The event was sponsored by insensive GmbH. With more than 50 Nations, RoboCup is the world wide largest competition for intelligent robots. The German Open is part of this initiative offering soccer as well as application leagues. This year, our team ToBI achieved the 2nd place of 5 teams in the @home-league. Current team members are Balaji Lakshmanan Ravishankar, Lokesh Mangamuri, Pragnesh Kumar Pallaprolu, Ben Julius Rogalski, Anton Wolff, Timo Beckmann, Zoe Klinger, and Niklas Schmitz. Leroy Rügemer and Dennis Holzmann lead the team. PD Dr.-Ing. Sven Wachsmuth, head of the COSY@Home-Lab, organises the @Home competition as a league chair.

RoboCup@Home-Team ToBI: Vice-Champion at German Open 2025 in Nuremberg

2025-03-17T17:01:47+01:00

Last week, the RoboCup@Home Team ToBI participated in the RoboCup German Open in Nuremberg. With more than 1.000 active participants, the event counts to the most important platforms for AI and robotics in Europe. In the @Home league, the competition included five teams from Germany, including the current world champion NimbRo (University of Bonn). Our team ToBI consists of eight students (Balaji Lakshmanan Ravishankar, Lokesh Mangamuri, Pragnesh Kumar Pallaprolu, Ben Julius Rogalski, Anton Wolff, Timo Beckmann, Zoe Klinger, and Niklas Schmitz) from the Faculty of Technology and three researcher from CITEC (Leroy Rügemer, Dennis Holzmann, Sven Wachsmuth). The robot needs to show its capabilities in a set of household related tasks, like welcoming guests, storing groceries, or carrying a person's luggage. After a good start at the first day of the competition, there was a close race (place 2 and 3) between ToBI and SCC in the stage 1 and stage 2 tests. Team NimbRo already took the lead with some points ahead. A very good performance in the final on Sunday saved the second place for ToBI in the competition.

On April 3, 2025 at 16:00, the RoboCup team invites interested students, academic and industry partners to a homecoming event in the foyer of the CITEC building.

RoboCup@Home-Team ToBi competes at German Open 2025 in Nuremberg

2025-03-06T16:59:59+01:00

Next week the Robocup@home team ToBi of the Faculty of Technology of the Bielefeld University is competing at the German Open in Nuremberg. The team consists of eight students and three scientists from CITEC. The robot needs to show its capabilities in a set of household related tasks, like welcoming guests, storing groceries, or carrying a person's luggage. The RoboCup German Open are an international competition event including different leagues, such as robot soccer, rescue, industrial, as well as at home.

Each year, the COSY@Home-Lab at CITEC prepares a new team of students for this event gaining high-level expertise in practical robot skills. Current team members are Balaji Lakshmanan, Ravishankar Lokesh, Mangamuri Pragnesh, Ben Julius Rogalski, Anton Wolff, Timo Beckmann, Zoe Klinger, and Niklas Schmitz. Leroy Rügemer and Dennis Holzmann lead the team. PD Dr.-Ing. Sven Wachsmuth, head of the COSY@Home-Lab, organises the @Home competition as a league chair. The competition starts on Wednesday, March 13, and ends with the finals on Sunday.

After the competition, the RoboCup team will invite interested students, academic and industry partners to a homecoming event on April 3, 2025. You can follow the team on linkedin.

The RoboCup@Home Team of Bielefeld participates in the RoboCup World Championships

2024-07-20T12:06:20+02:00

The RoboCup World Championship will be held in Eindhoven in the Netherlands from 17 to 21 July 2024. After successful participation in previous years, the team ToBi from Bielefeld University competes once again in the @home league. The world championship, which has been held before in Bordeaux (France) and Montreal (Canada), attracts 300 teams from 45 countries.

The team from the Faculty of Technology and the Center for Cognitive Interaction Technology (CITEC) at Bielefeld University consists of Master and Bachelor students being advised by scientific staff. Read more on the university news.

There is also a short spot of the team in the TV report at Kabeleins.

RoboCup@Home Team ToBi competes at the German Open in Kassel

2024-04-18T22:41:19+02:00

This week the Robocup@home team ToBi of the Faculty of Technology of the Bielefeld University is competing at the German Open in Kassel. The team consists of seven students and three scientists from CITEC. Leroy Rügemer from the COSY@Home-Lab leads the team. Dr.-Ing. Sven Wachsmuth, head of the COSY@Home-Lab, organises the @Home competition as a league chair. The competition started yesterday and the team was able to prepare for the tests today and tomorrow. This included capturing a map of the arena, recognising furniture and learning new objects and their names. The challenges for the robot today - on the first day of the competition - include storing groceries, welcoming guests, carrying a person's luggage, and understanding general service requests. The competition ends with the finals on Saturday.

Team ToBI is back home from the RoboCup World Cup in Bordeaux

2023-09-29T14:57:53+02:00

© Bielefeld University

On Sept. 28, our RoboCup@Home team ToBI celebrated its homecoming event. The team demonstrated to the CITEC audience what the robot achieved at the world cup in Bordeaux, back in July. In the demonstration the robot served as a party host welcoming guests, serving crackers, and cleaning up. After a 5th place in the @Home Open Platform League in 2023, we are looking forward to the next year, 2024 in Eindhoven.

Open sesame: best student teams honoured using SSI technology for opening doors

2023-09-26T00:00:00+02:00

Open sesame. On Sep 25, the best three student teams of the software engineering project at Bielefeld University in the summer term 2023 were honored by the project partners Deutsche Telekom IT & T-Labs. In an exciting cooperation semester between the DT IT/Chapter Fullstack & T-Labs and the Faculty of Technology & CITEC, the students developed a web app using SSI technology for opening doors.

RoboCup@Home Team ToBI achieves 5th place in RoboCup World-Cup in Bordeaux

2023-07-10T00:00:00+02:00

From July 4 to July 9, The RoboCup@Home Team of Bielefeld (ToBI) participated with a team of 10 Bachelor and Master students of the Faculty of Technology at the RoboCup WorldCup in Bordeaux, France. The team was lead by Leroy Rügemer and PD Dr.-Ing..Sven Wachsmuth from the COSY@Home-Lab. At the competition, the robot tobi successfully accomplished several household tasks, like storing groceries in a shelf, welcoming guests at a home party, serving breakfast, or cleaning the table. The Bielefeld team started together with 14 competitors from all over the world in the Open Platform League and achieved a great 5th place in the competition.

Human-Robot Collaboration in Future Homes

2023-07-06T00:00:00+02:00

A kick-off workshop at the end of June brought together all the project partners from research and industry at the CITEC research center, who will spend the next three years investigating how a robot can help in the kitchen. As part of the technology network it's OWL, the project is being funded by the state of North Rhine-Westphalia with 1.04 million euros. Of this amount, 276,000 euros each will go to three subprojects at Bielefeld University in the areas of intelligent systems, neuroinformatics and digital linguistics.

RoboCup@Home team ToBI meets with SUTURO team at University of Bremen

2023-04-03T00:00:00+02:00

Last week in March, our RoboCup@Home team ToBI (Team of Bielefeld) visited the University of Bremen for a preparation event for the RoboCup WorldCup 2023 in Bordeaux. A group of ten Bachelor and Master students from the Faculty of Technology took part in the intensive workshop and friendly competition event. They were led by Leroy Rügemer and Dr.-Ing. Sven Wachsmuth, head of the COSY@Home-Lab at CITEC. The SutuRoboCup is an outgrowth of the SUTURO student project at the University of Bremen. The three-day event, a mock-up of the World Cup, gave the teams from Bielefeld and Bremen the opportunity to test their robots under competitive conditions, get to know each other and exchange ideas.

The University of Bielefeld's TIAGo robot competed against the IAI's HSR robot in four challenges in the Houshold Robotics ("at home") category: Cleaning the table, Serving breakfast, Storing groceries and General Purpose Service Robotics (GPSR). However, the Bremen HSR robot achieved the highest score of the competition in the 'Serving Breakfast' challenge. Both teams made significant progress in developing their systems for the World Cup 2023, which will take place in Bordeaux from 4 to 10 July.

Robots learn to work side-by-side with humans

2023-01-31T00:00:00+01:00

When humans and robots work together on cooperative tasks, each partner needs appropriate space to act. The new DFG project SEMIAC explores perceptual and behavioral strategies of a mobile robot which considers implicit non-verbal signals of a human collaborator for its own navigation and acting. SEMIAC stands for Semantic Environmental Models for Implicit Action Coordination with humans. The joint DFG project with University of Magdeburg started in December 2022 and is funded for three years. While Madgeburg focusses on the perception and interpretation of interaction-relevant features (head and body poses, facial expressions, scene context), in Bielefeld this is combined with adaptive robot behaviors considering human intentions. The overall goal of the project is to reduce interruptions and interaction breakdowns in the close collaboration between humans and robots.

RoboCup@Home Team ToBI qualifies for RoboCup 2023 in Bordeaux

2023-01-15T00:00:00+01:00

CITEC's RoboCup@Home team ToBI (Team of Bielefeld) prepares for the RoboCup 2023 in Bordeaux, France. The qualification for the global competition was approved by the RoboCup@Home OC. The team ToBI consists of 12 Bachelor and Master students of the Faculty of Technology. The team is lead by the researchers Leroy Rügemer and PD Dr.-Ing. Sven Wachsmuth from the COSY@Home-Lab. "We are looking forward to the international competition in Bordeaux which will be very competitive. This will be a live-time experience for the students," comments Sven Wachsmuth. "We are happy to be back at RoboCup@Home!" The last competition of the ToBI team has been in 2019 when the team won the RoboCup German Open in Magdeburg.