Like last year we successfully represented our department at the university day (an open day of the university) and tried to enthuse pupil for robotic. Some team members met way too early for a student at 7:45 AM to send robots, the soccer field and our infrastructure on the long journey from the Informatikum to the department of Chemistry. At 9 AM on time other team members received the hardware and started to set everything up while the first visitors were waiting curiously. After everything was set, the robots started walking lively over the field and caught everyones attention when they kicked the ball. Sometimes they unfortunately hit the goal instead, because from the robots point of view the yellow goal looked pretty similar to the orange ball under the given lighting conditions. Additionally we brought some AIBOs (Artificial Intelligence roBOts, dog shaped robot build by Sony for entertainment), which can play with a ball as well as a little bone and react to cuddling and commands. Like last year there was the opportunity for visitors to control a robot manually and play soccer against the AI. We also had Paro, a therapy robot shaped as a baby seal which loves to be pet, with us. We also presented our new robot platform even though it still comes disassembled.
Overall it was a good chance for us to hunt and fix some bugs in our software and get an overview of our hardware condition (especially of the motors). Primarily we answered many curious questions of potential future students. We hope we could inspire them or at least arouse their interest in Computer Science.