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.

A few minutes ago the first Round Robin match against the RoboPatriots ended 0:0. On the very same morning team members worked in groups of two on the vision, walking, standing up and on the Hardware until short before the game. A new robot inspection was required multiple times, because the robots first got bottle caps attached as cleats, after that arm extension made of bottle caps and in the end bottle cap shin-pads. By now we have a large collection of empty and cap-less water bottles around our team table.

Shortly before the game started we faced a critical situation as only one robot was able to play with it’s Hardware and all others struggled with minor or major Hardware problems. In the beginning of the game we finally had three Darwins on the field as strikers and Kuddel, one of our self-designed and self-made Hambot robots, had his first use as a goal keeper. One could easily see the huge progress the team made during the last two days: The Darwins still fell down when they tried to walk, but they could stand up stable to continue playing immediately. In addition, we reached our first intermediate goal, which was to use Hambot in at least one game. Unfortunately the joy about that didn’t last very long, because after about a minute one of our Darwins fell into the Hambot unfavorably. Hambot still stood leaned towards the back for a few more seconds, but then he could not hold the position anymore and he crashed into his own goal. This year the goal is made out of tight wire instead of a soft net. This has the advantage of a stable goal, but it got fatal for the Hambot – multiple fractures of the hip were the result after only one minute of playing. However, our opponents had difficulties with the walking, too. At least they developed some kind of stable walk that reminds one of skiing, but it brought them forward only millimeters. That way the first half ended without anything else to report. After the break, Wheatly replaced the injured Kuddel in the goal and performed well even though the behavior was not tested beforehand. In fact, he recognized a field line as a ball sometimes and threw himself to one side, but he stood up stable in the first trial every time and searched for more dangerous balls. Our field player (first Fiona and later on Tamara) made it headways now, too. They walked from outside the center circle to the middle in order to kick the ball. Unfortunately they failed to kick the ball and instead they always fell right onto the ball. The RoboPatriots didn’t even had one robot on the field most of the time and so the second half of the game ended uneventfully.

In about an hour the next game will start and the agenda is clear: Whaetly shall play instead of Kuddel, who is still under medical treatment. To achieve an even better game play, some parameters of the goal keeper behavior need to be adjusted. Additionally, the Darwin walking still requires improvement. However, first of all we work on a stable shoot. We hope we can already see the first improvements during the next game against Bold Hearts. Bold Hearts by the way ended their first game with a 0:0 against the empty field. All results are published on the Humanoid website half an hour after the game at latest. So it is worth taking a look at the site after our next game, because we are probably slower with publishing the next game report than the TC needs to announce the result.

Communication is very important for our team. We often discuss and exchange views. This does not only happen in face to face conversations but with the help of mailing lists, Jabber and Discourse-Forum, too.
Regular exchanges between teams is an aim of the RoboCup-Community. Until now, except for competition times, it had only been possible to communicate via mail or mailing lists (if you wanted to reach several people at once). To change this, we created in consultation with other teams a forum for exchange among each other . We have already created categories and added some content to them.
You are very welcome to register to our forum, in order to ask questions, to comment on posts and to discuss your ideas.
Please do not let yourself be put off by the apparent emptiness of the forum – everything has to start from scratch.

Like last year we successfully represented our department at the university day (an open day of the university) and tried to enthuse pupil for robotic. Some team members met way too early for a student at 7:45 AM to send robots, the soccer field and our infrastructure on the long journey from the Informatikum to the department of Chemistry. At 9 AM on time other team members received the hardware and started to set everything up while the first visitors were waiting curiously. After everything was set, the robots started walking lively over the field and caught everyones attention when they kicked the ball. Sometimes they unfortunately hit the goal instead, because from the robots point of view the yellow goal looked pretty similar to the orange ball under the given lighting conditions. Additionally we brought some AIBOs (Artificial Intelligence roBOts, dog shaped robot build by Sony for entertainment), which can play with a ball as well as a little bone and react to cuddling and commands. Like last year there was the opportunity for visitors to control a robot manually and play soccer against the AI. We also had Paro, a therapy robot shaped as a baby seal which loves to be pet, with us. We also presented our new robot platform even though it still comes disassembled.

Overall it was a good chance for us to hunt and fix some bugs in our software and get an overview of our hardware condition (especially of the motors). Primarily we answered many curious questions of potential future students. We hope we could inspire them or at least arouse their interest in Computer Science.

The final match in the 2014 RoboCup will be between Bold Hearts and CIT Brains.

You can watch it at: https://plus.google.com/hangouts/_/g44thtouhxqjeevx6qccdcztk4a

The game for third place, played by EROS and Baset will be streamed, too.

Livestream: https://plus.google.com/hangouts/_/g44thtouhxqjeevx6qccdcztk4a

In the first Semifinal match of the 2014 RoboCup the teams Bold Hearts and EROS are facing each other.

Livestream: https://plus.google.com/hangouts/_/g44thtouhxqjeevx6qccdcztk4a