The IranOpens are over and everything is back to normal again. Time for us to look back at the last few weeks and draw some conclusions: Many of our modules have been used for the first time and we could gladly see, that most of them worked even better than we expected them to do under real life circumstances.

Our new vision and walking algorithms perfectly work together with older modules and brought us some very successful plays. We found and removed many huge and tiny mistakes and bugs, that existed undetected for a long time. The exchange with the other teams broadened our horizont, gave us the possibility to discuss human-league problems, inspired us to new ideas and let us make new friends. Last but not least, this years IranOpen was the first chance for three of our members to experience working at a RoboCup competition.

Of course, we also realized what doesn’t work that well yet and we are working on fixing these problems as soon as possible. We are mainly focusing on getting our new robots to work, so that we can run four robots at the same time for the world championship, which draws nearer and nearer. We are looking forward to see our robots score some goals.

All in all the competition was a huge success and lets us confidently work towards the world championship.

Our last day started as chaotically as we already anticipated it to be: 10 minutes before our semifinals-game was supposed to start, the exhibition halls doors were still locked. As the referees and the TC didn’t show up on time aswell, luckily we still had enough time to prepare.

Playing against Rhoban was a challenge, as always, but with our vision working perfectly and optimized walking algorithms we did pretty good. A few minutes before the game was over chaos took over once again: Due to unknown reasons the power was cut and therefor all game events stored in the Gamecontroller were lost. The referees and the TC took some time to deliberate about what to do now and then decided to continue the game anyways.

In the end Rhoban beat us, leaving us on the third place out of eight competitors. The first place goes to MRL-HSL.

After the games were over, we had some time to visit a temple with some members of Rhoban and ZJUDancer, and to show them around on the bazaar. The rest of the day was used to attend the very exciting closing ceremony. After the banquette, where we could once again talk and joke with our – sometimes long known, sometimes new – friends, it was already time to say goodbye.

13 hours of flight later, completely exhausted but very very happy, Hamburg had us back. We won’t have much time to rest on our success, though. The world championship is getting closer and today the lab was as crowded as always again.

Today began as early as the days before. Our first game against MRL-HSL was scheduled for 8:30 AM. Until then we still had to fix some hardware components. As we were working on our code until late in the night, one could see our exhaustion in our faces. Nonetheless we played a good game, which, unfortunately ended in a loss, but proved that our hard work during the last days was a success.

Our robots fell very badly during the game, damaging parts of our hardware beyond repair and causing major problems during our second game. Therefor Frankenbot now inherited Minibots arm aswell, making him more and more a patchwork-beast. Between the other teams, Frankenbot made himself a name as “Killer” or “Terminator” and is well known. Because there is one thing we could prove during the last days: We are very good at not getting tipped over.

In our free time after the games we went out to explore Teheran. We bought lots of food, spices and sweets at the bazaar and visited a mosque nearby.

During our third game the hardware problems lingered. By now everything seems to be working again and we hope, our robots won’t get hurt again tomorrow.

After the games we had some time to talk to the other teams. We introduced our ImageTagger to the other teams, Rhoban held an interesting presentation about decisionmaking processes during goalshots and ZJUDancer and MRL-HSL showed a part of their works aswell.

We are now making our last preparations for our semifinal-game against Rhoban. We are curious to see the outcome.

The first match day is coming to an end. Our enemies being three of the four bestplaced teams in last years world championship, our competition couldn’t be much tighter: We’ve got to face MRL-HSL, Rhoban and ZJUDancer. Especially Rhoban demonstrated clever teamplay and clean goalshots with their three robots and beat all three enemies. The other two teams played very good aswell, leading to many exciting moments. Even though we lost all three of our games today, we made great advances aswell: For the first time since our big hardware modifications we are able to walk long distances again. Our ball recognition works perfectly and huge parts of our behaviour are already functioning normally.

Playing against some of the best teams in our league was a good oportunity for us to learn. The knowledge exchange between the teams and the games provide great insights into new tactics and different gamemoves, many of which we are looking forward to try out. The huge amount of games also provides lots of data for our image tagger under realistic conditions.

The hardware wasn’t working in our favour today, and so Frankenbot happened to lose a leg – just a few minutes before our last game was about to start. Luckily the damage could be repaired quite easily. Unfortunately we needed one spare part, that we couldn’t replace. So we had to remove it from the other Minibot, which means, that we can only use one of them for the rest of the competition. At least we can focus our work on that one now.

We are now working on fixing the behaviour completely and optimizing some parts, in order to get better results in our next games.

With loads of luggage and close to no sleep we finally arrived in Teheran. We didn’t get much time to rest, because just two hours after the arrival at our hotel we had to depart to the venue and begin with the setup.

Everything seems to be a bit more organized in comparison to our experiences in the last years. Just a few hours later we actually had power and internet access, and we could begin our preparations. Lucky for us, as there were lots of things to be done: Besides having to prepare our two Minibots, this year for the first time we bring two new participants to the IranOpen. While we expect the two new robots, produced by the WF Wolves, to improve our performance, the new platform also brings some new difficulties with it.

By now the damages caused by the flight are fixed and our software is on a good way to be up and running by tomorrow morning. Our robots have been measured and this year we also got a (very brief) referee training. We will now use the rest of the day to keep working on our software, so that we will be ready for our first game tomorrow at 8:30 AM. We can’t wait to see what the following days will bring.

On tuesday, the 20th of February, the annual University Day took place at the UHH. While we couldn’t participate last year, due to the foyers being closed down, this year we could demonstrate our robots and inspire young students to study a computer sience related topic.

Interested students had the chance to steer a robot themselves. Even though Tamara (one of our Darwin-OP robots) usually works autonomously and makes her own decisions, this time we decided to put a leash on, or rather a controller.