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.

As you all have probably guessed: We are back in Hamburg since last Sunday. Our flight from Shanghai to Paris was delayed so we missed our flight to Hamburg and most of us had to stay the night in Paris and just returned the next afternoon.

The next day the University Lab “Fußballspielende Roboter” (Soccer playing robots) startet, which is organized by us, so we had no time to update you that we arrived home. The students in our lab are very productive as you can see in the picture.

After the first match we decided to not use Kuddel for the next match to take it easy on him, as some parts had been broken.So now we had time to concentrate on the Darwins and thoroughly tested the goalkeeper behaviour of Wheatly and tried to teach Tamara how to kick in a way that would move the ball. We were supported by the manufacturer of the Darwins, ROBOTIS, by half a pizza for each of us.

The match didn’t start well, we were playing with just two robots due to hardware defects which couldn’t be repaired in the short period of time. Wheatly was goalkeeper as planned and acted very well and threw himself down whenever he thought he was seeing a ball, it was just not the real ball. Latter hardly moved in the time, either Tamara and our opponents robots just moved around near the ball. Additionally, the motors in Tamaras knee were under different forces so that one side was put on stress more than the other. This caused her to give way and fall with increasing frequency.

Thus in the second half of the match Tamara became the goalkeeper and Wheatly field player, as well as Fiona who tried to help the two. We actually managed to kick the ball, moving it for about 10 cm. So this game also ended 0-0 and we hope to have more luck in the next game against the empty goal.

On the positive side, our banner is well visible for visitors and other teams, our flyers are taken along and we distribute our buttons to children whenever possible. We even passed a comment for the local television.

In China day four slowly got to its end, which means it is time for yesterday’s report.

In the morning we were having our breakfast, still being jet-lagged.  Afterwards we went to the competition hall. Since we already knew our hard- and software problems, we could start fixing them right away. Many of us spent their time on the soccer field to be able to test the developments directly. At noon some of us went to a nearby shopping center to have lunch. There were many small food stands with freshly made Chinese food. Many dishes were surprisingly spicy, but altogether very delicious.

When we came back to the hall some of us had organized a large ceramic tile to make smaller tiles out of it, which can be mounted below the feet of Hambot. This should move the center of mass to the bottom to improve Hambot’s stability. But how to cut to equally sized squares out of a ceramic tile without proper tools? The helpful volunteers organized a buzz saw for us, but this one was only suitable for wood. It was not able to cut hard ceramic. So we had no other chance than trying to break it along a sharp edge. It worked amazingly well, but put us into the focus of the people standing nearby.

For the Darwins, the problems at walking could also only be solved by modifying the hardware. Since we already had tried many options for the feet at the German Open, we quickly found a solution. This time we used caps of bottles. We screw them below the feet, with the open side pointing to the floor. This does not affect the extent of the bottom of the feet, but really increases the stability on the artificial turf with its high blades. Now walking works much better.

As you can see, we never feel bored at Bit-Bots.