ITS Campus, ITS News — Following the success of the wheeled robot team IRIS, the humanoid robot team Ichiro from the Institut Teknologi Sepuluh Nopember (ITS) has once again carved a proud achievement on the international stage by winning the 3rd Place Best Custom Humanoid Robot award at RoboCup 2026. This robotics and artificial intelligence (AI) competition, which brought together robot teams from various countries, took place at Songdo Convensia, Incheon, South Korea, several weeks ago.
RoboCup 2026 served as a prestigious competitive platform, drawing more than 3,000 participants from 45 countries. Team Ichiro ITS competed in the Small League division under the Humanoid Soccer League (HSL) category. In this category, the AI system of each robot undergoes rigorous testing and must demonstrate the ability to move, recognize the ball, and determine its position on the field without any human intervention.
Team Ichiro ITS Captain Oktab Bahar Rahmadani stated that this third-place title resulted from the team’s excellence in conducting research across mechanical, electrical, and software domains. This achievement proves that student-developed research can compete with technologies produced by global industrial manufacturers. “Our assembled robot has proven itself comparable to foreign technologies,” said the ITS Department of Electrical Engineering student with pride.
Oktab revealed that one of the keys to success in this competition lies in the innovations designed by his team. In this year’s event, ITS’s flagship soccer robot carried advanced mechanical upgrades such as a slider mechanism for movement flexibility, a smart hot-swap feature, and a precise localization system. The team integrated all of these upgrades with sophisticated software to enable the robot to move reliably and accurately on the field.
Oktab acknowledged that this success would not have been possible without the full support of supervising lecturers Muhtadin, S.T., M.T., and Moh Ismarintan Zazuli, S.Tr.T., M.T., as well as all team members. For Oktab, the greatest challenge lay in facing formidable world-class teams backed by substantial research funding from major industrial corporations. However, Team Ichiro ITS remained undaunted and instead keenly identified their opponents’ weaknesses. “We shrewdly exploited our opponents’ weaknesses to devise goal-scoring strategies,” he explained.
This remarkable achievement by Team Ichiro ITS at 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 autonomous soccer robots represents more than a mere game simulation; it constitutes a tangible prototype of competitive artificial intelligence research and intelligent automation for Indonesia’s future.
This international achievement is expected to further strengthen ITS’s position on the global robotics research map. The accomplishment serves as a motivational catalyst for all team members to consistently pursue technological development in future competitions. “The team (Ichiro) remains committed to continuously refining the robot’s performance in order to secure the first-place position in the future,” he concluded optimistically. (ITS Public Relation)
Reporter: Nadhifa Raghda Syaikha