A few minutes ago the first Round Robin match against the RoboPatriots ended 0:0. On the very same morning team members worked in groups of two on the vision, walking, standing up and on the Hardware until short before the game. A new robot inspection was required multiple times, because the robots first got bottle caps attached as cleats, after that arm extension made of bottle caps and in the end bottle cap shin-pads. By now we have a large collection of empty and cap-less water bottles around our team table.

Shortly before the game started we faced a critical situation as only one robot was able to play with it’s Hardware and all others struggled with minor or major Hardware problems. In the beginning of the game we finally had three Darwins on the field as strikers and Kuddel, one of our self-designed and self-made Hambot robots, had his first use as a goal keeper. One could easily see the huge progress the team made during the last two days: The Darwins still fell down when they tried to walk, but they could stand up stable to continue playing immediately. In addition, we reached our first intermediate goal, which was to use Hambot in at least one game. Unfortunately the joy about that didn’t last very long, because after about a minute one of our Darwins fell into the Hambot unfavorably. Hambot still stood leaned towards the back for a few more seconds, but then he could not hold the position anymore and he crashed into his own goal. This year the goal is made out of tight wire instead of a soft net. This has the advantage of a stable goal, but it got fatal for the Hambot – multiple fractures of the hip were the result after only one minute of playing. However, our opponents had difficulties with the walking, too. At least they developed some kind of stable walk that reminds one of skiing, but it brought them forward only millimeters. That way the first half ended without anything else to report. After the break, Wheatly replaced the injured Kuddel in the goal and performed well even though the behavior was not tested beforehand. In fact, he recognized a field line as a ball sometimes and threw himself to one side, but he stood up stable in the first trial every time and searched for more dangerous balls. Our field player (first Fiona and later on Tamara) made it headways now, too. They walked from outside the center circle to the middle in order to kick the ball. Unfortunately they failed to kick the ball and instead they always fell right onto the ball. The RoboPatriots didn’t even had one robot on the field most of the time and so the second half of the game ended uneventfully.

In about an hour the next game will start and the agenda is clear: Whaetly shall play instead of Kuddel, who is still under medical treatment. To achieve an even better game play, some parameters of the goal keeper behavior need to be adjusted. Additionally, the Darwin walking still requires improvement. However, first of all we work on a stable shoot. We hope we can already see the first improvements during the next game against Bold Hearts. Bold Hearts by the way ended their first game with a 0:0 against the empty field. All results are published on the Humanoid website half an hour after the game at latest. So it is worth taking a look at the site after our next game, because we are probably slower with publishing the next game report than the TC needs to announce the result.