In the last weeks it was very quite at the campus. But now the new semester has started and as every winter term there are many freshmen students starting to study at the Informatikum. In the context of the orientation unit we presented our team as a student working group and are hoping the see some new faces in our lab.
The first ones already dropped by and we are planning to hold a “day of open doors” in our lab (F-015) on Thursday the 1st of November from 12am to 6pm. Here we can give interested people a more detailed insight into our work.

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 /]

Breakfast began at 7am and after doing the dishes and packing a few things we drove to the hall for the first time.

Setup began quickly: Monitors were being prepared, batteries and their chargers were put in the shelf we had brought with us, network cables and outlet strips were installed and our 3D printer was connected (and sheltered by some boxes to prevent things falling on it).

After about an hour everything was ready and we started with a team meeting to discuss and summarize who would work in which areas and on what todos.

Shortly after that a small group went out to buy us some snacks and beverages, now we have a supply of instant soup, chocolate, cookies, vegetables to snack and fruits like apples and grapes.

Right now we’re working on different topics: Some are checking the functionality of the robots and the screws and are changing cables, others are testing if and how well we can walk on this turf, others are testing our vision, some are working on a new vision framework, and some software bugs are being fixed.

For more photos you can check out the photo album WM Leipzig which will be updated regularly. New articles will follow too.

 

Nearly all of our team mates have finally arrived in Leipzig.

Packing began at 8:30 am and the first rented bus departed around 11 am, the second one had to wait until a Bachelor’s thesis was submitted and departed around 12:30 am.

Five hours and a few traffic jams and road works later we arrived at our accommodation. Those who had left earlier had been thoughtful and had already bought groceries and cooked so that we could eat when the rest of us arrived.

Now the rooms are apportioned and we could begin unpacking. Tomorrow we’ll try to arrive in the fair hall at 8 am to start preparing for the matches.

More updates will follow tomorrow, as well as some photos!

 

Yesterday we celebrated and chinked glasses – not without a reason: The Hamburg Bit-Bots turned 5 years old.

Therefore we are opening our doors this week (not just a open day but an ‘open week’) to invite everyone who is interested to visit us, which we started with an introducing invitation and had a barbecue with our members.

Maybe we will manage to not just attract and interest new members but also to write an article about what happened in those five years and the history of the Bit-Bots.

 

The winner of the match with AEhuman in the intermediate round had to be determined by coin toss after we played for two uneventful half times and a scoreless penalty shoot-out.  The luck was on our side and we got the chance to play against the Iranian team Parand at 2 pm  (11:30 am German time)  in the quarter-final.

We are able to reliably detect the ball; just the walking is causing some troubles.  We were able to adjust some parameters and hope for a nice and successful match.