Finally the stress of the preparation is past and the actual World Cup stress can begin.

This morning at 8:30 our robots mounted a plane together with their six-headed team of staff.
At first they went to Amsterdam and from there they flew over the Atlantic Ocean towards Mexico-City where they will be participating at the RoboCup2012 World Cup in the Humanoid Kid-Sized League.

The World Cup is already a success, simply alone to the fact that it got possible for us to participate. The international RoboCup-competition is a unique chance to have a real exchange of experiences with other teams, compare the own skills with those of other teams and learn from each other.
Although the competition itself is not the most important aspect to achieve this, naturally it provides a huge motivation for research and certainly quite a lot of fun for the participants too.
Of course we will try our best to reach a good place, even though this is our first World Cup.

As here is not enough space to individually thank all the people and institutions that have supported us in the last weeks – and the list would inevitably be incomplete, we say an overall thank you to the Department of Informatics at the University of Hamburg whose members and friends have supported us in various ways in the last weeks so that our participation at the World Cup succeeds.

Out of the blue they were there. Three customs officers with a serious look on their faces approached us and took our robots. We were asked to follow them! In a separate room an officer produced a rod and moved it along the robot. Afterwards the beeping machine …

And then we suddenly got a private photo appointment for GLaDOS. After we described the officers the amazing thing we planned to do with the robots we were allowed to take a picture on a seperate X-ray machine.

So this is how GLaDOS looks on a X-ray. You can even see a missing screw if you look closely. Thus it seems as if we have to acquire a X-ray machine too soon 😉

Now quickly written down our website for the customs officers and then on to the Boarding Gate – A39.

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.

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.

First the good news: Suddenly we have all the replacement motors we wished for.
Now the bad news: This is due to the fact that we only have one game-ready robot at the moment.

Originally we had planned to work on the “animations” and on our “walking” today and therefore had met at 10:00 this saturday. But as soon as we realized that we could not boot Atlas, we knew that the day would not be as expected. We do not want to speculate about the exact reason here, but by now we suspect that the mainboard from Atlas does not want to play along anymore. Unfortunately this is the second-worst part that can break on a Darwin, just right after the even more difficult to obtain subcontroller.

All this comes at the most inconvenient time one could imagine: only a few weeks before the World Cup. With 2 of 3 robots it would still be possible to compete against another team, however with only one player we could have the best program and would still not stand a chance.

Of course this is no reason for us to give up! Currently we are feverishly working on the fast acquisition of the required replacements and are confident to get them (with support through the department) in time for the World Cup.

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: