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.

Today was the start of the tournament. The Bold Hearts played the opening match against the ZJU Dancers at 9 am. Afterwards we competed against the FUmanoids in a match that ended in a 0:0 tie. Unfortunately Minibot experienced some issues with the ball detection algorithm. Later on we were able to resolve the problem, but as usual other issues emerged afterwards. Although the Wolves have quite a good ball detection our team was not able to score a goal. 

Until 12 pm we had time to fix minor issues and continued on adapting the Wolves’ ball detection for our robot. 

In our second match the ZJU Dancers beat us with a score of 0:1. We believe  their success to be mostly attributed to their localisation software.

After a pleasant lunch break we were able to get the Wolves’ vision software running on Minibot. Since we use a different camera we had to adjust some parameters, so we could finally detect the ball. Still Minibot did not move much during the match since there seems to be a problem with the command to start the walking towards the ball when one is detected. We will approach that issue tomorrow.

In the penalty shoot-out against the Bold Hearts in our last match, which started at 6 pm, Hans, the Wolves’ robot, managed to score a goal and Minibot did a good job as goalie.

We also visited the other three exhibition halls in which the junior league is located. One of them accommodates student projects from various schools. We were quite impressed by the complexity of these projects. The subject of most projects was related to electronics, programming and environmental concerns. 

Yesterday evening we finally managed to run our software on the robot. So today we could start testing. The bus shuttle to the hall was in time, because we had to attend the opening ceremony at 9:00. Speakers at the ceremony were the president of the Qazvin University, important professors and the deputy mayor of Tehran. They underlined the importance of the RoboCup competitions and the research in Iran. 

Today we recorded test data for Fabians master thesis on pressure sensors .  The artificial turf on the playing field is not very high, but it is made of different kinds of artificial turf which makes the robots stumble at the borders between two parts.

The field markings correspond to the rules of 2015 and the games will be played under the rules of 2016.  At this competition there was no referee meeting, because the technical committee will be refereeing most games . Also there was no robot inspection to officially measure and weight the robots. Instead each team simply had to measure their robots themselves and fill out a form.

Tomorrow at 7:30 German time we will play our first game against the FUmanoids from Berlin. Unfortunately we could not do a test game today so we are very excited on how we will present ourselves on the playing field. At the moment we are working on including the Wolves image processing into our software, as our own image processing code is too slow to be used in the game. This was enabled by Marcs master thesis, to move our software to the ROS framework in cooperation with other teams. Thus, standards were defined  that make code sharing very easy. We are looking forward to the debut tomorrow. 

At 9:30 German time we will compete in our second group match against the ZJU Dancers. Our third one will be at 15:30 against the Bold Hearts.

Friday evening this years Robotic Hamburg Open Workshop started. Over 100 participants from Germany, Netherlands, Luxemburg and France, including the three current world champions, came to the Hamburg University of Technology (TUHH) to share their newest developments in software and hardware with each other. 

Yesterday there were several workshops about a wide range of topics including robot self-localization, image processing with artificial intelligence or funding of robocup teams.

Today at 12pm the visitor day takes place. In addition to interesting talks several test matches are scheduled. The matches give a good overview of the problems we are facing until the next competition, the IranOpen in April 2017.

After two interesting days full of inspiration we hope do see you today.

This November for the third year in a row the Robotic Hamburg Open Workshop(RoHOW) will be held again. In cooperation with the RoboCup team from the Hamburg University of Technology, the HULKs, we organize the networking and communication event for students and researchers from all over the world in the field of humanoid robotics. The preparations are in full swing and the team invitations are dispatched. We are looking forward towards an interesting weekend and your visit on Sunday, the 27th of November. From 12pm on everyone can come by and visit the RoHOW. For more information please visit http://rohow.de/2016/en/.