RoboCup 2024: Vice World Champion of the Standard Platform League!

After 7 days of all-out programming, trouble-shooting, new-things-trying, bug-fixing and yelling at inanimate NAOs we have done it once more and defended our spot among the top teams of the Standard Platform League!

Arriving in Eindhoven, we were thrilled to find out what this year might have in store for us. Rico and Stefan had been in the lab for a week developing new approaches and fine tuning others but we knew that there was still a lot to do before we could get started on Wednesday with our first match. So we got right to work!

 

And oh boy there was a lot to do: We taught the robots to cooperate with humans calibrated the lower camera, put together the whistle detection, localized us on the field, made the robots go through matrix after matrix to find the most elegant way around the ball, whispered to the robots and got the whole gang up and running, designed our poster that we certainly didn't put up at the very last minute and literally so much more!

And finally, when Wednesday rolled around, we had our first match of the tournament against B-Human. Being forced to realize that we simply needed more time, we left the field losing 0:8. Exposing the weaknesses of our new innovations, at least we knew what we had to do - is that a good excuse? Not really, but oh well, losing the first match of the tournament is hardly an omen; we usually develop our code quite significantly over a tournament week - starting on a high note would have certainly been nice, but we're experienced enough not to get discouraged.

Along with the first game days we also participated in this year's Technical Challenge: Shared Autonomy. For this challenge, we were not allowed to look directly at the field: operating one robot remotely, you had to rely on the sensor data streamed onto your laptop - no easy feat, especially if you have to coordinate yourself with an autonomous robot on the field at the same time - not to mention the other team trying to thwart your maneuvers!

On an entirely different note: URG surprised everyone with the official announcement of the NAO v7: new sensors, more computational power, more more more. At the same height, however, we'll have to figure out for ourselves if we can get those little humanoids to run more smoothly than previously possible on the v6.

Making our way to Saturday afternoon, we finally got to the end of the Group Phase 

 

No bad result at all but B-Human's dominance was as  clear as ever. Maintaining a perfect goal balanced, they were absolutely on their A-game. To our great relief, the draw for the Quarter Finals told us that we'd meet them again no sooner than the final - should we make it that far. Last year's third place rUNSWift made quite the comeback for their last games: winning the play-in against Berlin United, they obviously didn't get too much sleep. We left our match against Berlin United 0:0 and rUNSWift hadn't been able to win a game thus far - all that didn't go unnoticed. However, we ultimately prevailed with a strong 6:0.

The Semi Final against the HULKs was quite the nail biter - the match could have gone either way! We secured a spot in the final after a 2:0, leaving the HULKs to battle it out against RoboÉireann for the third place.

For the final, well, what can I say, it didn't work out - quite the opposite, actually. B-Human delivered an excellent performance and deservedly won the title. Their long passes and balanced team play led them to an overwhelming 10:0, triggering the immediate end of the match.

Winning silver we are once more capable of saying that we are the second best team in the Standard Platform League! With this incredible achievement there was only one thing left to do: PARTY!

Exhausted and happy, but weirdly enough energized at the same time for another RoboCup year, we left Eindhoven and made our way home, already looking forward to next year, to RoboCup 2025 in Salvador, Brazil.