Today is already the last day of the German Open. Here a short overview of what we did the last days.

 

We made sure the software was running correctly on all robots so that they are able to play. We worked on Minibot’s walking, and transferred existing motion sequences of Minibot standing up to the new system. Also we put plates under Minibot’s feet, to expand the foot area.

The vision continued working (here a small correction: our vision was not made faster by simply removing features that we don’t need but through algorithm optimisation). We can now change or adapt parameters over wlan while the robot is running

(Black circles are balls that are disregarded, since they are over the horizon, the red line.)

 

Parts of our working group were busy debugging and revising the GameController. We also worked on a tool to visualise what the robot thinks or knows about the field, like its localisation and where it assumes the ball to be.

 

Having just one Minibot-robot posed a significant problem in the last days . Since software engineering is focused on the future and thus on software for the Minibot-platform, we need Minibot for lots of testing. Since we worked on vision, behavior, walking and standing-up, several people needed to wait for their turn.

We had planned to already have a second Minibot by now, but due to delays in production sequence we don’t have it yet. In the future it will be essential to have a second (better even a third) Minibot to not delay working on code or testing.

The article about the games from yesterday will hopefully follow shortly after this one.

Yesterday the first two games took place: Drop-In Games. Two teams play together against the other two teams on the German Open, and each team supplies two robots.

Around 4 pm the first game started, in which the Rhoban Football Club play together with the WF Wolves against the 1. RFC Berlin (formerly FUmanoids) and the Hamburg Bit-Bots.

 

The game at 7 pm took place with the same combination of teams. In neither game a goal was scored, but robots from both team Rhoban and RFC Berlin saw the ball and had contact with the ball several times.

 

This morning the third game took place, in which the RFC Berlin played with the WF Wolves against Rhoban Football Club and Hamburg Bit-Bots.

One of our robots, Wilma, managed to see the ball at Kickoff and walked toward it,  but fell. Before she managed to fully get up, two other robots, one from Rhoban and one from Berlin reached the ball, but stood too close to each other so that neither could properly kick the ball.

The robot from Rhoban moved the ball a bit but then fell on it. A second robot from team Rhoban reached the ball and began to manoeuvre the ball into a corner next to their own goal, and to repeatedly move the ball out of the playing field.

 

Wilma tried to join the game after a while, and managed to slowly but surely get up, but she fell when she tried to start walking. One robot of the Wolves ran into a goalpost and one robot of team Rhoban strayed into the opponent’s goal.

The ball got moved to the middle line, and the robot from team Rhoban walked straight towards it, and past it, just to manoeuvre the ball into the same corner again where it went out of the playing field again.

With that, the game also ended in a tie.

 

Time really flies during competitions. Here is just a short recap of what we all did yesterday.

Since the vision of our robots was rather slow (it worked, but it was too slow to be useful in a game), we used the vision of the WF Wolves, and adapted it to our robots and our needs (for example they also factor in how the head of the robot is inclined; we don’t have this data). In general we threw out a few features to make the vision faster.

The colour config got adapted to this surrounding and artificial turf. We are still working on computing the horizon, currently it starts from below which results in a wrong horizon so that balls get left out. We will try to compute it from above.

Furthermore we are working on a ‘top-down’ object detection, this means we know what we are looking for in a picture (the ball). This method is based on human perception.

 

For some time we have been using ROS, Robot Operating System, which provides a consistent standard (and made it possible to just use the vision of the WF Wolves). ROS has many advantages, but our RecordUI, with which we recorded movement sequences, does not work anymore. That’s why a few people sat together and wrote a plugin for ROS so that we can record sequences again.

 

Also we wrote a boot-script, so that software that is already on the robot will be executed when started, even without connection to a computer. The walking-configuration was adjusted to the really short artificial turf here. Motors in Minibot which were older and used were changed. Several things, especially the flight to Nagoya, were organised for the World Championship. Older and out-of-date Plugins for this website were updated or changed so that this article hopefully will be linked on Facebook and Twitter again.

Two team members were occupied with organisational stuff like game plans for the German Open; for example we will have several Drop-In Games next to the normal games. Here this will mean that two teams play together, and each has to provide two robots and play against the other two teams with two robots each. The GameController got fixed and the teams were inscribed.

After this exhausting but productive day we had roasted potatoes with red cabbage, as well as spaghetti with tomato sauce for dinner, so that hopefully we could continue to concentrate on working today.

 

Today is the first day in the hall. After breakfast at around 7:30 the first group departed, since the hall opened at 8 am. Half an hour later the rest followed.

The shelf we brought along was assembled quickly and the most important things, our food supplies, were put away.

 

After setting up the network, connecting monitors to laptops and plugging in the laptops, a period of quiet working began – although it is rather loud in the hall itself, many teams are still arriving and unpacking, and there are a number of things that have to be set up for the competition.

We started adapting the ball detection for the field and getting minibot to walk on the relatively short artificial turf. Probably we will also put the old Darwins to use.

Today we met at 9 o’ clock to pack for our trip to the German Open in Magdeburg. This time we had vans with nine seats and lots of storage room, so taking everything with us was no problem.

At 11:30 we were finished loading everything in and after lunch we headed to Magdeburg.

We have three smaller vacation apartments and are located directly next to a supermarket where we bought groceries for this week.

Peeling potatoes, cutting carrots, cucumbers and bell peppers, putting potatoe wedges, spring rolls and chicken nuggets in the oven, some salat, and dinner with something for everyone was ready.

 

Afterwards we had a team meeting where we talked about our plans and assignments on this competition.

Tomorrow morning we will look for a good spot in the fair hall and will update you then.

Here just a short overview:

After we scored third in the penalty shootout we will play against the team that scored second from another group, against Robo-Erectus Junior at 9:30 am. (The game will be streamed on our YouTube channel.)

Here this morning’s match schedule:

[table id=6 /]

Following teams scored first in their respective groups and thus will definitively play this afternoon: Rhoban Football Club, RoboBiu, MRL-HSL, EROS, SEU-Jolly and the Bold Hearts

Here just a short overview over the results of the matches:

[table id=5 /]

The games which ended 0:0 will be decided via penalty shootout which will take place after all regular games have been played.

When we arrived at the hall in the morning we were surprised to find a task to “organise a bouncing castle for the FUmanoids” on our whiteboard. Obviously we were not going to just leave it there, so we build a “miniature bouncing castle for robots” and placed it on their team table. After they arrived and found our artwork we heard laughter and they signalled the task had been finished to their satisfaction.

It doesn’t look that good with the robots, though. The vision seems to work, so we can recognise balls and the behaviour animates the robots to kick if we stand in front of a ball, but walking is still quite difficult and not all robots work correctly. In the end, they and their hardware are getting older, and maintaining had fallen by the wayside.

While we had been working on those problem (and a lot of screws were tightened, hardware- and softwarebugs were fixed, testing took place to figure out what exactly the problems were) we also continued working on the vision, talked to other teams about walking and testet in how far Hambot and Minibot can play in a game.

After a trip to the grocery store we also had Fritz Cola and Mate which hopefully boosted productivity. At least it lifted the mood.

One person of our team had been asked to organise livestreaming and commenting on some games. In the meantime, all robots who want to participate in the RoboCup had to be measured. Robots have to be in certain ranges of measurements, they mustn’t be too tall or too heavy and have to be humanoid enought, otherwise they mustn’t participate. Of course all of our robots passed, it is not their first competition.

At 6 pm (announced via a piercing loudspeaker announcement) the Opening Ceremony began. Speakers were the General Chair of Robocup 2016, the Chief Executive Officer of Leipzig Trade Fair, the Deputy Prime Minister of Saxony, the Mayor of the city of Leipzig, the Head of Unit of Robotic of the European Comission, the Founding President of the Robocup Federation and the General Chair of Robocup 2016.

The Trade Fair, Leipzig and Saxony were promoted, and the audience was reminded of the vision of the future of RoboCup, why we do this and what we do this for, what the goal of all is and how RoboCup helps reach this goal.

What would a World Cup be without a betting game? That’s why we set up a betting game on kicktipp.de where you can bet on different events of the World Cup for the Humanoid Kid Size League.

For example you can bet for each game what the outcome will be, or which team will win the World Cup, or which team will score the most goals.

Of course you can join in and play from home (there are no costs involved, it’s just for fun). If you want, you can register on kicktipp.de and have to enter an email adress and a password and activate your account via a code or by clicking a link in a confirmation email.

Or you can skip this step and just go to kicktipp.de/bit-bots and become a member of that tipping community. Under the menu point “Prediction Center” you can place your bets.

On that site you can also find more information like the groups of teams and matching schedules (or you can look those up here), and what other people placed bets on. When results are clear points will be distributed and as soon as new match schedules will be announces we will update the site.

[If the site happens to be in german, you can change the language if you click on ‘DE’ which can be found under the text of the site.]

Yesterday during the team leader meeting it was decided to have the matches of the Humanoid Kid Size League in groups of three.

Lots were drawn and the teams were put in groups of three, and will play against the other teams in their respective groups. The winning team will definitively continue to be in the competition and the team who comes second will play against a team that came third in another group and vice versa.

Those are the groups:

[table id=4 /]

Match Schedule for the 30th of June is the following:

[table id=2 /]