Our journey to Brazil is getting closer. There are just two weeks left, so we are going to make a coding weekend at the upcoming weekend (4/7 – 6/7). The main focus will be on testing the software, do some necessary hardware modifications and organize the last things for the trip to Brazil.

We are very excited and look forward to our second big journey.

Yesterday evening we got the command that we have to leave the competition hall at 6 pm. Everything will be searched and nothing that we would need tomorrow was allowed to be taken to the hotel this day. The rease was a so called “highly important person”. That was a major problem for every team. Especially the laptops were needed to keep working at the hotels. We decided to leave the robots and three laptops there and take the rest of the laptops with us.

To be safe, we asked Neda, one of the translators, who we met at the beginning if it was adequate to buy other cloth for our female team members. This question got positive response. Our cloth was ok she said but for such a VIP it would be better to wear traditional iran clothing. As soon as the hall closed at 7:30 pm we drove to the center of the city (we live at the suburbs) and bought new headscarfs as well as a Manteau each. This is a form of coat but looks rather like a blouse going down to the knees. Neda, our female translator is very helpfull. She is fast end effective in helping us to organize vegetarian food or cloth. From our point of view the women here are much more pragmatic and can enforce themselves better than the men. About Teheran we will talk another time when we visit it. The evening was quiet despite the try of Timon to fix the broken shower, which was a metalic hose without the rubber. Duck tape didn’t do the trick so we need to find a better solution. It is kind of a tradition to fix at least one broken thing at the hotel where the Hamburg Bit-Bots are staying.

This morning we arrived at the hall in time and were allowed to take our laptops back in after they passed a control at the metal detector! The VIP was Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, former president and still the third person in the country next to the fact that he is the richest.

After he circled with his cortege through the hall the IranOpen where started with big green-white-red smoke and firework. All with the lovley sound of the fire alarm.
It seems that there is a big fan base for robots here, the hall is full and the mood reminds us of carneval. We were already filmed and iterviewed several times.

Our first game was today against the Bassets. Until last year they played at the teen-size-league but due to rule changing they are now allowed to participate in both leagues. Even with our robots facing the enemy fearlessly we lost the game with 0:2. But we are plesant with this result. Our robots were fully functional and didn’t made any mistakes.

The one hard action was when Tamara tried to hold a ball that was kicked by one of the enemy players which were three times higher than the darwins resulting in a falling robot by the impact of the ball.

In comparision with the other teams we need definitly not to hide and our next game will be tomorrow at 9 am against the Bolt Hearts.

This morning we were the first team in the competion hall. We are still struggeling with the fact that schedules are rather soft than deterministic. The mesurement of the robots were set to 9 am and with only three hours delay it actually happened.

Before that we tried raisin and carrot jam for breakfast. We could not really taste a lot of difference. At breakfast here in iran it is primary very sweet-tasting.

We by the way are living in a hotel at the Olympic Academy of Iran. The national boxing team we could already see at training and Tamara as well as the other robots could already pull some olympic air through their fans, awaiting the day robotic soccer becomes a olympic discipline. We still don’t know when the games will be, but we keep you informed as soon as we know something.

While the organizers still working on the setup, we are continiously working on our robots. The vision works now even with the bad light conditions. How our robots will handle the uneven field we will see. The floor is made out of wood panels which bend when a person walks on them. With the referee walking all over the field during a game, that could be a real problem.

Additionally we had the chance to see all the other robots at the tournament and in the evening we will get the chance to visit Teheran, because the competition hall is closing at 6 pm.

We are still curious.

After we already had a delay of 1 1/2 hours at depature in hamburg, we finally managed to arrive in Teheran. We had a stop in Istanbul to refuel the plane which took another whole hour. At least we didn’t had to leave the airplane. All in all the flight was pleasent and the food was enough,

In the evening after arrival we also had to get our visa, which costs exactly as much as a german passport. During the one hour car ride to the competion place, we could take a look at the traffic system of Teheran. There is actually a relativly modern traffic guidance system with a lot of small LED signs. How exactly those things work, we don’t know yet but our guess right now is that they need to be some kind of traffic light.

The architecture is very interessting and absolutely less boring than the german one. Furthermore there are a lot of art and light installations next to the streets. Soon after arrival at the hotel we managed to get into bed very quickly and the wonderfull mountain panarama scene, we only saw at the next morning.

We are currently in the competition hall and have, even if slow, at least a stable internet connection. Due to this we think that we need to post a lot of images and videos after we
got back to germany. The organizers of the event are still working on the setup within the competition hall and sometimes the power supply turns off.

We just got something to eat and for all who are wondering, the time shift to germany is about +2.5 hours. So it is always a little bit later than in hamburg. When exactly our games will take place is not sure by now. Here it is all a little bit slower than in germany.