Make Berlin: Arrival and Preparations

We arrived yesterday and started to prepare everything. In the evening there was a little come together and there is always time to socialize.

If you would like meet us here you can find all information on the website: http://maker-faire.de/berlin/

back in the game

Hey everyone! We are back in the game :D This weekend (30.9-2.10) we are going to have a little practice tournament at Maker Faire Deutschland in STATION-Berlin.
Take the chance and visit us there!
We're looking forward to the event and to see you

Robocup 2016 World Championship recordings

You still have a chance to enjoy robot soccer if weren't able to attend Robocup or missed the live-streams. The Streamteam of HTWK Leipzig has published their recordings for you to watch and enjoy.

We finished in 3rd place in Robocup World Championship 2016

We won our final game this year 4:1! Thanks to team UChile for the great game!

Watch us fight for 3rd place at 12:00

Our semi finals game against UT Austin Villa ended with a score of 2:2. After the game 7 penalty shots were taken without scoring any goals. In the end UT Austin Villa was awarded the win in accordance with the rules due to better ball handling. We want to congratulate UT Austin Villa and look forward to watch them in the finals at 13:30.

Before that you can watch your fight for the 3rd place in the live-stream. Our challengers will be team UChile.

Finals tomorrow and a big thanks to Bembelbots

We wanted to remind you that the finals tomorrow will be streamed live. Our semi finals match will be broadcast at 9:45 local time. The third place match is scheduled for 12:00 and the finals will be starting at 13:30.

A big thanks to Jonathan from team Bembelbots and Benni Zander for providing live commentary for the games.

Nao-Team HTWK vs. TJArk - 8:2

The first time we met TJArk in the 2016 competition they beat us in a close 0:1 match in the group phase of the outdoors competition. Both of us eventually dropped out of the outdoors competition and proceeded towards the main competition indoors. Our quarter final match for the indoors competition was a rematch against TJArk which we won with an convincing 8:2.

A big thank you to our stream team

We wanted to use the downtime between two matches to thank the HTWK Stream Team for providing this awesome service and Prof. Dr. rer. nat. Sibylle Schwarz for her support in administrative matters, making our work possible in the first place.

Nao-Team HTWK vs. UPennalizers - 2:0

Live-stream

We just beat UPennalizers, a team originating from the USA. The UPenn-Robots attempted several aggressive runs on our goal that were nearly successful. Fortunately we were able to get the ball from them and counterattack. Sadly the game was struck by faults in the wireless communication and the referee had to call a timeout in the second half.

Having won this match, our first place in the indoors group phase is secured. At 17:00 local time we will be competing in the quarter finals. Our challenger is yet to be determined between teams TJArk and HULKs.

Robot Selfie

The robots did a selfie to remind you that we have a live-stream of Robocup World Championship 2016.

A Thank you to our Professors

We wanted to take take a moment to spotlight the people at our university that supported us over the years. Accompanying us since our founding in 2009 is Prof. Dr. rer. nat. habil. Karl-Udo Jahn.

After Prof. Jahn retired Prof. Dr. rer. nat. Klaus Bastian assumed the role of our academic supervisor. We are proud that both of them take the time to visit us at most of our competitions.

Prof. Dr. rer. nat. Klaus Hering and found the time to visit us as well yesterday. We hope he enjoyed our performance during the matches. 

Among other visitors from our university and the academic ministry of Saxony were Prof. Dr. P. H. Habil. Gesine Grande, Prof. Dr.-Ing. Sabine Wieland, Martin Dulig and Dr. Eva-Maria Stange.

Robocup World Championship 2016 group photos

Hi. If you wanted to see the humans behind the robots for once then we got something awesome for you: a 360 degree recording of the whole SPL league. Of course you can watch the boring variant as well.

Nao-Team HTWK vs. Northern Bites - 5:0

Livestream

Our last match of the day has finished. Team Northern Bites from USA was our opponent. Our defense line robots were the ones that carried us in this game. Several times Northern Bites dribbled the ball deep into our half. However, in the end our defense managed to wrangle the control of the ball away from them every time, securing our win.

Nao-Team HTWK vs. NTU RoboPAL - 6:0

Starting with today we are participating in the indoors competition using more traditional ground texture for the playing field. This allowed us to exhibit our strengths in our match against the team NTU RoboPAL. We thank our competitors whom have traveled here from Taiwan for the match and are looking forward to the next challenge.

Below we provide a time lapse of the game so you can compare the indoors and outdoors fields.

Nao Devils win the outdoors competition

Team Nao Devils from Dortmund, Germany just beat team B-Human from Bremen in the sunny outdoors areal of the Robocup World Championship 2016. As this was the outdoors finals game Nao Devil is now celebrating their victory. Both teams preformed so well in robot soccer so that only one goal was scored during the whole game. All teams present will now continue to compete in the regular indoors competitions. We want to thank both teams for entrusting us with refereeing the outdoors finals game.

Robocup impressions - Robot Dance

At Robocup there are several categories to compete in. We exclusively participate in robot soccer. However, we wanted to give you some impressions from Robot Dance as well.

Nao-Team HTWK vs. B-Human - 0:4

Our longstanding competitors of B-Human were the last challengers for the outdoor group phase at Robocup World Championship 2016. The match proceeded similarly to the former match against Nao Devils. A strong advantage in robot speed enabled B-Human to score four goals. Our outdoor matches in this years competition are done for now. In the next matches the indoor fields are used. Giving us the chance to bring our strength into play.

Nao-Team HTWK vs. Nao Devils - 0:2

Our second game of the competition had a similar flow to the first one. Both teams struggled with the new ground texture of the new fields. The midday heat in the glass hall provided an additional challenge for both teams. However, in the end robots and humans persevered and fought a good match. Nao Devils was able to decide the match for themselves eventually with their quite impressive walking speed. We are now looking forward to our last game of the day against the team B-Human.

Nao-Team HTWK vs. TJArk - 0:1

TJArk from People's Republic of China was our first opponent this year during Robocup World Championship. Walking on the new competition field was a challenge for both teams as this years ground texture is harder to handle compared to the last years. In the end TJArk demonstrated a more stable walking style and managed to win the very close game with a score of 1:0.

Below we provide a time lapse of the game so you can have a look at the new ground texture yourself.

Nao-Team HTWK Members were awarded the Jakob-Leupold-Medal by HTWK Leizpig

HTWK Leipzig awarded the Jakob-Leupold-Medal to Rico Tilgner and Thomas Reinhardt for their long time contributions and international representation of our university. They founded the Nao-Team HTWK in 2009 with the support of Prof. Dr. rer. nat. Klaus Bastian and Prof. Dr. rer. nat. habil. Karl-Udo Jahn. As core members of the team they are highly motivated individuals that continue to define our team spirit and shape many current team members.

The team thanks the HTWK for their recognition and support.

RoboCup 2016 Livestream

Due to the great popularity of the last years we decided to provide a livestream of Robocup 2016. The stream team just finished the setup and the countdown for the first official game hast started. If you are unable to visit us here you can view the games live at robocup-leipzig.de

Group shot

Today is the last setup day and we are preparing for the first competitions. This includes the qualifiers for the drop-in challenge. We passed the qualifiers a few hours ago and celebrated the occasion with a group picture.

Drop-In

Good morning everyone.

This day is dedicated to the so called "Drop-In" challenges.

During Drop-In the playing robots are composed of members of multiple teams. The idea is to explore the ability of cooperation beyond a single team and to support "weaker" teams.

To participate in the Drop-In, each team has to implement a standard "language" to be able to communicate with robots of other teams.

Uniquely Broken

Although our first preparation day was very funny and productive, we have to grief about one of our fallen ... Mr. Burns' left leg is 'uniquely broken' and can't be repaired during the competition.

Timetable

The finalized Timetable is now available at www.tzi.de Timetable. 
To summarize, we are playing 3 times on Thursday (30.06.2016):

• 11:15 versus TJArk
• 14:15 versus Nao Devils
• 15:45 versus B-Human 

We wish everyone a good start and are both eager to see what progress the other teams have made and how our improvements will impact the competition.

Setup Robocup 2016

After some days in our lab we successfully migrated to the competition venue to prepare even further and most importantly get all of our robots repaired.

This year we will have an outdoor competition for the first time, which means we will play in the glass hall, resulting in varying lighting conditions. Another feature of the outdoor competition is the artificial turf. It took some time to adapt our walking accordingly, but we're confident to do well. Unfortunately the glass hall won't be open for visitors, so our matches can only be seen once we join the main competition on Friday afternoon. However, there will be a livestream and we will upload videos on our youtube channel as usual.

Preview RoboCup 2016

Hey hey hey everyone!! :D We are still alive, perfoming hard in our lab!! Special Thanks to Martin Blum, he created an awesome promo video! :) With this being said, here is a little preview for the upcoming RoboCup Leipzig event :) Have fun!!

Bembelcup is over, we won!

The Bembelcup is over and we finished first with 12:0 goals and 12 points in 4 matches.

We'll use the day tomorrow for some testing, but now it's time for drinks!

Bembelcup

We finished first at this years Bembelcup after winning all 3 games so far. We made some major adjustment regarding our vision which enabled us to test other new cool stuff such as improvements to the strategy.

Everything is really cool like expected and we look forward to spend some time roaming around the campus after our final match.

Night of Science

Today we traveled to Frankfurt for the Night of Science, an awesome annual event at the university. We have a friendly tournament with our hosts the Bembelbots as well as the team Nao-Devils from Dortmund.

We won our first match 2:0 against the Bembelbots and look forward to the next rounds and some Äppler (applewine), a popular local beverage.

A new football field!!!

One weekend, two different colored carpets, one cutter knife, eight bottles of glue and Computer science students. Which one of them doesn't fit in? ;D

With blood, sweat, tears and glue we combined both carpets into a new football field, which helps us to prepare our robots for the outdoor challenge at the RoboCup Leipzig!! :D

LNDC 2016 - GlaDOS journey

GlaDOS used some free time between our matches and had a little journey at the 10. Lange Nacht der Computerspiele. If you missed the chance to visit this awesome event, enjoy some of GlaDOS impressions from her journey :)

 

Have fun! :D

LNDC 2016 - Results

Hey there! We won our little tournament! :)

8:0 against Bembelbots
7:0 against Nao Devils
6:0 against NaoTH

Thanks to all teams, organizers and visitors! :D

 

Schedule for the LNDC

In less than 2 hours we will have a small tournament with the present teams. Here is the complete schedule:

Lange Nacht der Computerspiele

Tomorrow we'll be part of the "Lange Nacht der Computerspiele" ("Long Night of Computer Games"), a great annual HTWK event. This time we're located inside the HTWK sports hall, which is a walk of 10 minutes away from the rest of the event. We've setup our field and the team area. Starting on saturday 15:00 we'll have friendly matches between us and our guests, the Bembelbots from Frankfurt, B-United from Berlin and Nao-Devils from Dortmund.

If you're in Leipzig, make sure to check us out to get a taste of things to come with the Robocup in June.

More Videos

Here are the videos of the 3rd and 4th matches:

Nao-Team HTWK vs MRL

Nao-Team HTWK vs DAInamite

All other videos will follow soon!

Impressions from Iran Part III: Isfahan

We used the last days of our trip to Iran to visit Isfahan - the country's third largest city which has also been the capital of Iran two times in it's history.

Our sightseeing tour started on Naghsh-e Jahan Square, the second largest city square of the world.

The Shah Mosque is directly located on Naghsh-e Jahan Square and gave us an impressive view of historical architecture and religion in Iran.

Isfahan's Grand Basar offers a big variety of goods and shops such as oriental spices and herbs, local hand crafts, carpet sellers and candy shops.