We started at 6:30 – thanks to jet lag and going to bed early – well rested and fresh into the new day. The RoboCup hall will open on Saturday for the two so called setup days and therefore we needed to take the hotel environment for preparation work.

Because of the ongoing rain the team meeting could not take place at the swimming pool but at one of our rooms instead. The wall was quickly converted to a todo board and tasks were distributed. As it is nearly impossible to test vision or behaviour under the hotel conditions, we concentrated besides of these homepage posts on animations (projectable movements).
GOAL, who will hopefully has his first assignment as a goal keeper during this world championship, needs to learn to stand up. In addition we were working on a larger variety of stable shots for the Darwin robots. The behaviour will take the goal information into consideration and therefore a good combination of ball and goal tracking is needed. We managed to prepare a lot, which can be tested in the competition hall tomorrow. Our software is in a very good condition some hours in advance of the tournament for the first time. The behaviour needs to be optimized and tested, but the functionality is all existent. However, we are all excited whether GOAL will be ready until the start of the first game, beeing not only able to stand up but also to defend our goal.

The rooftop of our hotel has a small covered area in which we made our new home. We enjoyed the sight and the climate as well as a productive work atmosphere. Just the power grid caused some difficulties: The ground wire had 60 Volt attached – which makes for example all metal pieces of a laptop beeing energized while the power supply cable is attached and therefore the skin is prickling every time someone touches them. Thats tingly software engineering the Brazilian way 😉

We used the lunch brake not only for a mental cool-down, we also went swimming in the sea and ran riot in the waves. Afterwards we went to work again with twice the motivation we had before. Since the noon the Bodensee-Haie RoboCup team from Gymnasium BZM Markdorf started working next to us on the roof top. The team consists of four boys and a female teacher and they are participating successfully in the Junior Soccer League.

We additionally met the Hulks at the beach.

A small appendix to the Brazilian fauna from the afternoon: On our way to a new supermarket we had to pass a small tarn in which a crocodile was bobbing up and down!

We spend the evening in a small hotel restaurant a few hundred meters to the north of our own hotel. They had a large and heavy buffet which also served vegetarian and gluten free food. On our way back we mad a short loop way to a small market and bought (amongst others) some Cashew nuts.

In the meantime the hotel is crowded with other RoboCup teams. They are sitting in the lobby, on the roof top and an all other public spaces preparing for the next day (this can be also recognized by the vanishing wlan power). We are really looking forward to start testing and meeting other teams in the RoboCup hall tomorrow.