Today the round of sixteen started. We played our match against the NUbots from Australia. As our walking algorithm was hard to configure to artificial turf, we tried to include the walking code from Rhoban from France, which is open-source,  into our software. We managed to do so just two hours before the game started and so we did not have much time to test it. But during the game the improvement was clearly visible. Probably we are going to develop it further and adapt it to the specifics of our robots, as it is easier to maintain than our old walking algorithm. 

The game ended without goals, so we had to do a penalty shootout, which the NUbots won with 2:0. So they entered the quarter finals. For us, this is the end of the competition, but now we have time to talk even more to other teams to exchange experiences. 

In the drop-in games we are ranked 4th place. As our robots didn’t score any goals by themselves, this result is mostly due to our (great!) teammate-teams, and the factor that our robots were fit to play and so were on the field most of the time.

After being briefly introduced and tried out in RoboCup 2016, this year officially included the Drop-In Games. Four teams bring one robot each to a joint team. This encourages teamplay between teams as well as cooperation. These games are especially challenging for the referees as they have to look out for eight robot handlers (one for each robot). For the teams it is interesting to see which team has which strength. We believe that you can get a good overview of the league through these games. The results are scored in a separate scoring system. Each robot gets points for being in play while a goal is scored and more points for scoring a goal themselves.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The regular games started with a preliminary that determines the composition of the round of sixteen.

Yesterday we played SEU-UniRobot from China (loosing 0:1 to them) and ITAndroids from Brazil (ending in a 0:0). Today we played MRL-HSL from Iran loosing with a 0:1. We now stand at 3rd place in our group and we will play the NUBots from Australia tomorrow.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Today we were able to use our “new” robot for the first time. In actuality it is a Minibot with newly manufactured parts for the legs and arms and an old torso. The missing metal parts for the torso which we replaced with old parts were meant to arrive at our lab about a week before we took our flights to Japan but due to difficulties at the post office we never received them and they were sent back.  After assembling him here at the venue we got him through robot inspection and he even received a name: We call him Frankenbot.

 

 

Furthermore we used our time to exchange with other teams about different robot platforms, since we are looking for a new one ourselves. New materials such as carbon fiber are especially interesting to us.

It was very relaxing to get some sleep over night in a comfy bed and after a short breakfast (cereals with milk), we started our way to the competition halls.
Travelling by train gets easier each time, the biggest difficulty is to find the correct price for the station you want to travel to. Then you just buy a ticket with the corresponding price and use it to enter and leave the train system. For the next day it will be even easier as the organisers will be handing out train tickets to RoboCup participants so that we don’t have to queue at the ticket machines anymore.

Arriving at the venue we quickly saw that the organizers prepared a lot to avoid mistakes of some previous RoboCups. The registration area was clearly laid-out and it took us only a few minutes to get our team badges and train vouchers. We found the competition fields to be fully prepared, too, and quickly started to set up our team tables.

Next on our schedule:

• Calibration of the camera to adapt to the light in the hall
• Making sure the robots survived the travel fine and are able to start the system
• Testing the walking
• Robot Inspection by the Technical Committee

It seems like yesterday that RoboCup 2016 was in Germany, the world championship on home soil – and suddenly the next world championship is just around the corner! In 2017 it takes place in Nagoya, Japan. While Maike was the first to arrive in Nagoya already on Saturday, almost all other team members finally arrived today as well. Tomorrow, just in time for the start of the two set-up days, Jasper will be the last of our team to join us and will thereby reunite our team again.

After a total travel time of more than 12 hours, first to Helsinki and then to Nagoya (for Daniel and Niklas with an additional stopover in Tokyo), everyone is totally tired. Nevertheless, we still had enough energy to explore the surroundings of  our hostel near the central station in Nagoya at least a little bit. As a member of the organizing committee, Maike was already able to inspect the hall for the very first time. All in all, it looks very promising, even if our robots will likely have some problems dealing with some gaps in the artificial turf. However, we will only be able to investigate this more tomorrow, when we are all permitted to enter the hall with our whole equipment.

After a traditional Japanese dinner, the suitcases are now packed with the equipment for tomorrow and we are looking forward to starting a new RoboCup adventure at 7:30 Japanese time (which is 0:30 German time)!