Author: Timon

Back from Mexico

/ Timon

The Bit-Bots landed more or less safely at the Hamburg Airport yesterday evening. The Team looks back at a successful world cup, with a lot of knowledge sharing with other teams and some smaller, hard earned, successes (our robot actually threw the ball!).

An official ranking which takes into account the technical challenges unfortunately has not been published yet. Because we made 8 Points there, and only six teams dared to approach the challenges, we hope for a place in the top-ten despite our defeats. Currently only the results of the individual games can be viewed online.

While the team members that attended the world cup still recuperate from their jet-lag we have prepared some visualisation of the work on our software within the last weeks.

The nodes of this tree-structure represent files and folders in the main development branch of our version control system.
One day reflects to roughly 10 seconds of the visualisation and you can see how developers modify the project with each commit (green = add, orange = modify, red = delete). At June the 15. was the take-of for the team. You can clearly see how the competition had impact on our activity. (The Time reflects to CEST, the local Mexican time is -7 hours)

For the technical interested: We use gource as a visualisation tool for git. Linux-Users can install it directly via their software-center.
If you change to a directory containing a git-repository and execute “gource”, it will render a nice visualisation of your own project.
Pretty much of a show for just 10 seconds of work!

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A tip for all DARwin-OP owners:

/ Timon

Remove the USB-back-cover from the fit-PCi2 Main-Controller!

The reason is, that this back-cover is just clipped on and can get loose from repeated crashes of the Darwin.
What happens next is that you have a quite large metal-clamp rolling around between the CM-730 Sub-Controller and the mainboard, randomly short-wiring the circuits on the board. We are suspecting at least one of our two board losses to be caused by this loose cover.

Picture illustrating the USB-backcover position
Here you can see the Position of the USB-backcover on the mainboard

To remove the USB-back-cover, simply open the Darwin (use the “Assembly-Manual”) and get to the mainboard. Then carefully clip it off using a flat screw-driver without damaging the board. The USB-Ports will remain fully functional and the chances of your Darwin getting a “heart attack” are reduced drastically.
Picture showing the back-cover of the USB-Port and the USB-Port after removing
The Backcover shortly after removal from the USB-Port

Don’t forget to take the necessary measures to avoid static and take note that the whole Darwin upper chest is attached in a way to the lower body, so that the whole upper body with the CM-730 would crash onto the mainboard as soon as you undo the second last screw when the Darwin is in a “sitting” position. It is the best to handle him laying flat on the table even though this takes more space.

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Backup from WTM

/ Timon

Yay we got reinforcements! The Knowledge Technology Group (WTM) has kindly lend us their Darwin for the World Cup in Mexico. This marks the first time for us to have an external substitute.
3 Bitbots, 2 of them are inactive, another robot joins the 3
With a little bit of luck it could be that GLaDOS and maybe Atlas too will be fit again, which would mean that we would have 3 or even 4 robots we could take to Mexico.

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First training for the Throw-In Challenge

/ Timon

Recently “Wheatly” was working hard to train for the Throw-In Challenge.
Currently he still has some trouble with his footwork, but the responsible physician Dr. Olli is confident that he will be fine after some loosening-up exercises.
Initial the throwing range was just about one meter, but after a few exercises and support by his trainers the range could be increased to more than 2.5 meters. Some exceptional throws even rolled just outside the field.
Of course we secretly filmed the training:

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