ITS Campus, ITS News — Following the success of the IRIS wheeled robot team, the Ichiro humanoid robot team from the Sepuluh Nopember Institute of Technology (ITS) also successfully carved out another proud achievement on the international stage by winning the 3rd Place Best Custom Humanoid Robot award at the RoboCup 2026 event. The robotics and artificial intelligence (AI) competition, which brought together robot teams from various countries, was held at Songdo Convensia, Incheon, South Korea, some time ago.
RoboCup 2026 is a prestigious competition, bringing together over 3,000 participants from 45 countries. The Ichiro ITS team competed in the Small League division of the Humanoid Soccer League (HSL) category. In this category, each robot’s AI system was tested and required to move, recognize the ball, and determine its position on the field without human intervention.
ITS Ichiro Team Leader Oktab Bahar Rahmadani stated that the third-place title was achieved thanks to the team’s excellence in research, from mechanical, electrical, and software aspects. This achievement demonstrates that student-developed research can compete with technology developed by global industrial manufacturers. “Our assembled robot has proven to be comparable to foreign technology,” the ITS Electrical Engineering student proudly stated.
Oktab revealed that one of the keys to success in this competition lies in the innovations his team designed. For this event, ITS’s prized soccer robot featured advanced mechanical upgrades, such as a slider mechanism for flexible movement, a smart hotswap feature, and a precise localization system . All of these updates are integrated with advanced software to ensure the robot’s reliable and accurate movement on the field.
This success is credited to the full support of the supervising lecturers Muhtadin ST MT and Moh Ismarintan Zazuli STrT MT, as well as all team members. For Oktab, the biggest challenge was competing against the world’s top teams, supported by abundant research funding from major industrial corporations. However, the ITS Ichiro Team was undaunted and instead, astutely identified their opponents’ weaknesses. “We were astute in exploiting their weaknesses to develop strategies to score,” he said.
The ITS Ichiro Team’s remarkable achievement in RoboCup 2026 also aligns with Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) point 4 on Quality Education and point 9 on Industry, Innovation, and Infrastructure. The development of this autonomous soccer robot is not just a game simulation, but a concrete prototype for competitive imitation intelligence and intelligent automation research for Indonesia’s future.
This international achievement is expected to further strengthen ITS’s position in the global robotics research landscape. This achievement will serve as a motivator for all members to consistently develop their technology in future competitions. “(Ichiro’s) team is committed to continuously improving the robot’s performance to achieve first place in the future,” he concluded optimistically. (ITS Public Relations)
Reporter: Nadhifa Raghda Syaikha
Translator: Devinka Mutianeira