We arrived in good time at the competition hall. While most team members searched for a parking space, Sheepy and Jessica went into the hall and took a look around.

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no images were found

When the rest wanted to join them, they were stopped, because the hall had not been officially opened its doors and it was only Sheepys orange Bit-Bots shirt which let them pass unnoticed (the organizers shirts are of a quite similar colour).
The team then regrouped outside the hall to wait and recognized some faces when the other teams arrived.

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Shortly after eight o’clock the teams were allowed to enter the hall, so we came in (again) and set our stuff up near one of the playing fields. Since then we are testing, installing the new heads and doing everything necessary to get ready.

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no images were found

Today we were busy working again.

At 8 a.m. we got up, had a quick breakfast and went straight back to our modern age notebooks. The beds in our room had to double as desks, testfields and storage racks, so that we have done as much as possible before the Setup-Days starting tomorrow.

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In the afternoon we finally dared to go outside – and were promptly rewarded with a heavy downpour. Luckily it went by fast and we were able to enjoy our 2 hour long city tour through the centre of Eindhoven.
Something catched our eyes: The city centre is literally wallpapered with RoboCup advertisements. No expenses were spared and every streetlamp was decorated with a suitable banner. Quite possibly there will be a lot of visitors at the World Cup. We are looking forward to it!

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After we just had our third and last meeting for today, we are quickly finishing the programming of the daily changes and taking our time to keep you up-to-date. Tomorrow we have to start loading our van at 6:45 a.m. to get a good place at the competition grounds.

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Amsterdam and Hamburg are often compared, especially when it comes to having a lot of bridges. That there are still differences and you can not exchange one for the other, is right now viewable on the official World Cup website.

As far as we know, our department has (at least for now) not been taken over by the University of Amsterdam 😉

Update: The mistake has been corrected on the official site

A heartly “Goede Dag” from the Netherlands.

Right at noon this saturday, a team of 8 people went on their way to the World Cup in Eindhoven.

We got stuck in traffic jams twice, but otherwise we had a nice and pleasant journey, during which we were also able to do some further planning.
In the evening we finally reached our accommodation in Eindhoven (after being sent to another place from the address which was given to us). Quite typically we had to climb a lot of narrow and steep stairs, even one of our rooms has a stair in it.

At dinner, some couldn’t stop working and repaired a broken chair in the common room:

Afterwards we had our first team meeting. The tasks of the next days were discussed and noted. Even the staircase had to play its part in the planning.

How will it go on now?

We are curiously looking towards the next days, which will probably have one or more challenges for us, so that we will have to deviate from our planned path. Tomorrow, at sunday, we will work in our accommodation, from monday on we are able to work at the competition grounds and on wednesday the tournament will begin officially.

During the last days the workgroup members were working quite a lot in the lab and did the final preparations for the World Cup. You can find some impressions in the attached gallery.

Even on the first of May (Labour Day) our workgroup members are hardworking. After we got the permission to use our old lab (F-015) in addition to F-031, we had green light for some modifications. For quite some time we were planning to setup at least half of a good playing field because our old one was inclined and as such not really usable anymore.
Thus began the planning and alteration of the rooms at 10 o’clock. It was a lot of screwing, carrying and installing. As a reward we got two newly arranged rooms in which everyone has a lot of space for working.
The evening was then used to do some tests on the new playing field and to prepare for the ucoming Kirchentag.

Of course we did a lot of searching in the last days and looked around who has reported about us. We don’t want to withhold this material and arranged the best for you:

In two video clips from the german tv station MDR we can shortly be seen, you can find them here and here. There is also an article from heise online here. The most thrilling thing about this article surely is this picture.

Just as significant as the picture from heise are these pictures:

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no images were found

A big thank you again to the WF Wolves, who took this pictures for us.

What is left beneath the memories of a great team and an outstanding time? Especially a lot of motivation! There are less than eight weeks left till the world cup in Eindhoven and there is still a lot to do. Next tuesday we will have a planning meeting, where we will decide about the things we will work on till the world cup. But before that, our focus will be on the preparations for the Kirchentag, at which we want to show a demonstration and a friendly match against ourselves on saturday from 11:00 o’clock till 13:00 o’clock in the foyer ESA East. You can get more infos about the event here under the topic “Information und Medien – “Robotik: from fiction to science”.

The first game has preliminary ended, the score so far is 0:0 and the match will be decided through a penalty shoot-out this evening (Mexican local time). We are very happy about this temporary result against a very strong opponent, the FUmanoids from Berlin (http://www.fumanoids.de).