B-Human triumphs: Bremen robot footballers conquer the world!

B-Human triumphs: Bremen robot footballers conquer the world!

On July 22, 2025, Team B-Human, consisting of students from the University of Bremen and the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI), celebrated another triumph: The team won the RoboCup World Championship in Salvador, Brazil. This marks the twelfth world championship title for B-Human, who have now taken part in this important competition for the 16th time in total. The victory is particularly notable as it marks B-Human's first time winning the title on the American continent, following unsuccessful previous appearances in Mexico, João Pessoa and Montreal.

The competition organized by the RoboCup Federation Held since 1997, it promotes the development of robots and artificial intelligence. Teams from universities, research institutions and industry take part. In addition to the football game, there are other disciplines such as RoboCupRescue and RoboCup@Home. B-Human competed in the Standard Platform League (SPL), with all teams using the same type of robot, the NAO humanoid robot from Softbank Robotics.

Dominance in the Standard Platform League

The development of B-Human's robots in recent years has been particularly impressive. They didn't concede a single goal during the eight games of RoboCup 2025 and scored a staggering 76 goals, with five games ended early due to the Mercy Rule. In the final they defeated the HTWK Robots from Leipzig 9-0. This represents B-Human's tenth title in the SPL, with the team open-sourcing its algorithms following the tournament. The released software solutions were used by the top three teams in the Challenge Shield, demonstrating B-Human's impact on the robotics community.

B-Human's team structure is well organized; It includes seven students, one doctoral student and two supervising scientists, Dr. Thomas Röfer and Dr. Tim Laue. Project studies at the University of Bremen not only promote the development of software, but also scientific publications. B-Human won another technological competition, the Technical Challenges, achieving 74.5 out of 75 possible points. This proves their superiority in areas such as adapting to lighting conditions and precise passing.

Sponsors and future outlook

Since 2017, the company CONTACT Software has been the main sponsor of the team, which also receives support from other sponsors such as cellumation, Ubica Robotics and the Alumni Association of the University of Bremen. The successes at international level increase the interest and visibility of sponsors interested in science and technology.

The coming years promise to be just as exciting for B-Human. A new competition for humanoid football robots will be introduced in 2026, in which the team will also compete. In a rapidly evolving field of robotics, B-Human will continue to lead the way and pave the way for future innovations.