During the last days the workgroup members were working quite a lot in the lab and did the final preparations for the World Cup. You can find some impressions in the attached gallery.
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After several weeks we finally found the bug that misaligned our motors:
It seems that the motors don’t like the power supply to be disconected shortly after setting new values….
Tamara was the one to suffer for automatic tests:
Finally we can start working properly!
As we have already said, we had some problems in Berlin with the motors. To correct this problem, we have taken our roboters apart and only connected the motors for a close test. On the positive side, this means that we will have completely tested motors for the World Cup.
We are sorry, but it took us quite some days to gather the photos together.
So now you can take a look at them – have fun!
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From 11am to 1pm we had nine robots within the ESA East building today to astonish young and old. Next to our five DARwIn-OP robots, which could at least show some of their abilities during penalty shooting, we also had two Sony AIBOs and two Nao robots with us.
The weather was a little bit to friendly to us, so that the the sun was shining the whole time through the glassy ceiling. With such bright light our robots haven’t had any chance to find the little orange ball on the field. Just our hero Wheatly went for the ball as always no matter what the sun was doing and scored one goal after another. The poor Glados who was the goal keeper in this moment was totally confused, although he showed some brillant actions to keep the ball out of the goal some time.
Even without the announced test game against our own robots, there where a lot of questions which where answered via the microphone from different members of the team.
This day brought a lot of fun and the feedback of the audiance showed that we weren’t the only one who had a lot of fun. We hope that we can show you some pictures in the next days. Thanks a lot to Jessica, who was present this day just to make some of those pictures.
Even on the first of May (Labour Day) our workgroup members are hardworking. After we got the permission to use our old lab (F-015) in addition to F-031, we had green light for some modifications. For quite some time we were planning to setup at least half of a good playing field because our old one was inclined and as such not really usable anymore.
Thus began the planning and alteration of the rooms at 10 o’clock. It was a lot of screwing, carrying and installing. As a reward we got two newly arranged rooms in which everyone has a lot of space for working.
The evening was then used to do some tests on the new playing field and to prepare for the ucoming Kirchentag.
Of course we did a lot of searching in the last days and looked around who has reported about us. We don’t want to withhold this material and arranged the best for you:
In two video clips from the german tv station MDR we can shortly be seen, you can find them here and here. There is also an article from heise online here. The most thrilling thing about this article surely is this picture.
Just as significant as the picture from heise are these pictures:
A big thank you again to the WF Wolves, who took this pictures for us.
What is left beneath the memories of a great team and an outstanding time? Especially a lot of motivation! There are less than eight weeks left till the world cup in Eindhoven and there is still a lot to do. Next tuesday we will have a planning meeting, where we will decide about the things we will work on till the world cup. But before that, our focus will be on the preparations for the Kirchentag, at which we want to show a demonstration and a friendly match against ourselves on saturday from 11:00 o’clock till 13:00 o’clock in the foyer ESA East. You can get more infos about the event here under the topic “Information und Medien – “Robotik: from fiction to science”.
Here you can see all our images from the German Open 2013.
Have fun!
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Now it’s official, the Wulffs were able to beat us in the final match with 0:2, after our robots expected problems with the ball recognition. But after all it was a very successful Championship and it went better than at our first visit in Magdeburg last year.
Motivated by this improvement we are looking forward to the World Championships in the Netherlands. We pointed out that we are now serious opponents and hopefully are able to score a good result in the Netherlands with a little bit of bug fixing.
We had our game against FUmanoids from Berlin this morning and played with the successful software from the previous game with just a few improvments like running to the ball and not straight around it.
Our robots had many undesired ground contacts during the first half, but the action took place in midfield or on the opponent’s half most of the time. In half-time brake we did some successful adjustments to our walking. Anyway, action shifted to our own half of the field. Even so, no goal was scored. On the one hand this was owed to the fact that the robots from Berlin were gracious to us and on the other hand GLaDOS excellently saved his own goal!
In the end we had two second placed teams in our round robin group, because the Bold Hearts surprised with a 1-0 victory against the WF Wolves. If the game had ended 0:0 it would have been necessary to make a penalty shoot-out against all opponent teams against an empty goal. The team that would have needed the least time until the goal was scored would be first in group and so on. Fortunately Bold Hearts spared all teams that.
So we met FUmanoids in the semifinals for the second time and semifinals are not supposed to be finished with draw. Both teams did their best to avoid a penalty shoot-out in the end. The game was balanced and exciting. Robots from FUmanoids as well as our own robots had good chances to score into both the opponent and the own goal. After 20 minutes of game time it went into extension. It went on the similar way with the only change that half time is shortend to five minutes and so there were at least even less shots on a goal. Berlin had a really great chance in the final minutes of the 2nd extension, but again GLaDOS made it! He jumped in the right moment when the ball threatend to pass the goal line and even prevented the attacker from progressing to the ball after that.
So it came to the penalty shoot-out. There’s not much to say, it is best to look at the video.
