Windows-based robots have won the two-legged soccer competitions in the RoboCup 2007 humanoid league. German team NimbRo defeated reigning champion Team Osaka in a two-on-two match, and bested Spanish team PAL Technology in a penalty kick competition.

NimbRo’s two-legged “KidSize” robots, just under 2 feet tall, feature 20 joints driven by intelligent actuators. According to Sven Behnke, head of the Humanoid Research group at the University of Freiburg’s Computer Science Institute, the autonomous robots are controlled by a Sony Vaio UX UMPC running Windows XP, located in the upper part of the trunk. Three wide-angle uEye USB cameras allow the robots to perceive the field.

All in all, Windows XP dominated the humanoid league of RoboCup 2007, since the runner-up robots of Team Osaka, the VisiON 4G and Vstone810, also run that operating system.

The next RoboCup will be held in July 2008 in Suzhou, China