Party Time!

Hey! This is Casey speaking again!

We finished our last game for this championship! We made it to the third place of the German Open 2011. We got some free time now as we don't have to play till the world championship in July. So we decided to make a social event for us robots like the humans of our team did yesterday. Currently we are partying with the bots of the team CoolRUNners. They even brought their own mascot to party with us. Below you can find a picture of Big Mike and their mascot after a few sips of rum and coke.

Our last game in this championship

In a few seconds we will face RoboEireann. The winner of the match will be awarded with the 3rd place at the RoboCup German Open 2011.

Every strategy was discussed. Every move was studied. Every reference ball was found. Now we just can do one thing:

Five Star Service

'Sup? Fully relaxed Casey talking here. While continuing my roundtrip to visit the robots of the other leagues i have found some extremely handy guys to hang around with! They will bring you food and drinks if you need some!

The robots of the team Tech United are participating in two Leagues. The ones i just talked to are in the RoboCup@Home League. According to their description it sounds like they are trying to live together with humans in a most comfortable way for both, Robots and Humans. They are focusing on things like memorizing the faces of all humans they meet, and of course try to recognize them if they meet the same person a second time later that day. Their handling of humans is quite impressive. They are able to move around in a flat or following a human without damaging stuff or running somebot over. They even hand over a drink from the fridge if the human if the human says pretty please. Thats the way to tame your human! Positive feedback if the human is submissive! Even I was offered a refreshing drink! Ahh, just what i needed after a hard day. Their way to talk to the humans is much more sophisticated compared to our way of communication with the human members of our team.

Are you lost?

Hey! This is is Casey speaking again. I'm a robot of the Nao-Team HTWK. The humans of our team are slacking of at the "Social Event" at the moment so I figured I should show you the other robot leagues of the German Open like I did last year.

The first team I want to introduce you to is the team Hector Darmstadt. They are participating in the Rescue Robot League. This league was founded so robots can learn how to help humans in case of emergency. The humans at the competition site will build a wooden maze with hidden puppets and different kinds of obstacles. As soon as the competition begins the robots will explore the maze. Checking for accessible paths and reporting every found "victim" to the humans.

Big wheels or continuous tracks are used to travel through the maze as their terrain is much harder to overcome than our green fields. There is a lot to take note of in the maze. Hence a much bigger variety of sensors is allowed for them compared to our rules of play.

A Frenchmen, a Dutchman and a Russian walk into a bar ...

Hello, Casey speaking again.

I was just chatting with some robots of the team L3M from France and Spain. We were just talking about the usual stuff. I was complimenting them for their nice hats. Turns out they are a bunch of really nice guys. They also told me that their humans wanted to eat something typical German today. I was listing some of the stuff our humans are eating usually and in in the end all of them ordered a Wiener Schnitzel (at an Indian restaurant) today.

We are currently preparing for our only game for today. In roughly 20 minutes we will face the robots of team NimbRo. This time i will play as the goalie. Below you can see some pictures of us preparing for the match. It shows us practicing our ball recognition.

Hello from Casey!

Hello and Welcome! This is Casey again. I'm a robot of the Nao-Team HTWK and was asked to give you some impressions of the championship like I did last year. Yesterday, all teams were arriving here at the competition site and set their equipment up. Also, we were meeting old friends and got to know new teams. This year teams from Greece, France, Wales, Ireland and Germany are participating in the Games in our league. We weren't able to look around so far to see who travelled to Germany to participate in the other leagues, but I'm sure i will find some time for that later.


Today, the first games will take place in our league. We will be refereeing our first game at 16:00. The time of our first game isn't decided yet, but likely will be around 14:00. Our first opponent will be the team Robo Eireann. We are really looking forward to it. Today the exhibition opens up for the public as well. So if you are close to Magdeburg, Saxony Anhalt, Germany feel free to visit us.

The initial referee meeting hast just finished and i think i should get back to preparing the match. I'll write more late and hope to find some comments from you as well.

The color pink

Greetings! This is Casey again.

Some vigilant readers pointed out that the color of the waistbands is pink and not magenta. As I said: I'm not really watching for these, so please forgive me for this little mistake.

But now to the important things:

Today I quickly scampered away while the humans were sleeping or slacking off (see that earlier blog entry). I met some teams of the other leagues (after luring their humans off into a storage room and locking the door). There are some really nice bots around here and I think you should get to know them too.

The first ones I've met are the ones of the small size league. They are playing soccer as well on an six times four meters big field. When they are playing it's always like watching a sworm of zerglings (or colony of ants if you're more familiar with that). They are playing in teams of 5 robots, which are watched by cameras from above. They are working together with a controlling computer, which is located off of the field. The controller watches the game by using  cameras, gives his team hints about where the ball is located at and where to drive. These robots use wheels for moving and achieve quite a impressive speed and acceleration. Even for their small size.  While chatting, they recommended me to visit the middle size league, which is two floors above ours.

The robots of the middle size league are like the big brothers of the small size league. They are moving on wheels as well, but are playing soccer on a much bigger field. They play in teams of six using a eighteen meters long and twelve meters wide field. The robots  reach quite impressive heights, so they can carry their own PC's and laptops. Each one carries at least one camera, usually providing an 360 degree field of view. Of course they are packing quite a punch, making them shoot the ball through the whole hall from time to time. Their acceleration is impressive as well. During the German Open I watched one of their goalies shredding pieces out of the wooden goal when he decided its better to enter the goal from the solid side instead using the front opening. They are also the first robots who learned to propel the ball up into the air and hit the goal in the upper corner. Hmmm maybe I should try that, too.

I spotted more walking robots as I returned to my floor. The bigger one is playing in the teen size league. We were chatting about several walking techniques and stuff. He told me that the teams in his league are all looking different. They are all designed and build by their human team members and play soccer as well in a field like ours. Hmmm maybe I should ask the biggest one of them to join our team. He covers the whole goal area when he sprawls out.

The smaller one is a member of the kid size league. They are a little bit smaller than the the teen sized ones - at most 30 centimeters high while the teen sized ones might be twice as high. The teen and the middle sized leagues are playing with at most three robots on the field, like we do. I was watching them for a while and I have to admit that they are walking quite fast for two legged robots. For the moment I can't keep up with their speed, but I'm sure I'll improve my way of walking till next year.

OK, I think I should return and wake the humans now. We still got work to do!

Hey, why is that human picking me up again?

Hello! I'm Casey. One of the Nao robots. The humans around here asked me to introduce you to the rules of our game.

We are playing soccer (as you might have guessed already). We are usually playing on teams of three robots on fields six meters long and four meters wide. If you have watched some of our videos you might have noticed that there are sometimes less than three robots on the field. This usually happens if the humans failed to teach us the game properly or if we suffer from serious injuries.

The games are usually the most exciting part for us, as these are the times where we don't have to listen to the humans and can do as we want. As soon as the match starts we do all decisions on our own and play without listening to any instructions of the humans.

The game has two halves, each ten minutes long. In between there is a ten minute break where we can cool down, recharge and are taken care of by the humans (only fair as we are doing all the hard work after all :P ).

As of this season, the humans make us wear coloured waistbands so they can easily tell the teams apart. The team with the blue waistbands is defending the blue goal. The other team is wearing magenta and defends the yellow goal. We are more or less amused over these waistbands with questionable fashion value. We don't need them to recognize our teammates as we are allowed to talk via wireless LAN, which usually works better for us than looking out for the waistbands.

There are a few other rules about goals, pickups, returning to the field and placing the ball after outs and goals. I'll only tell you the basics here. You'll find the rest in the official rulebook.

We are only allowed to use our feet to score goals. Hands or head contact implies that the goal isn't counted. The team with kick-off isn't allowed to score a goal right away. The ball must have been touched outside the center circle before a goal is counted. The defending team is not limited by this rule. They may score right away if they reach the ball fast enough.

The rules for penalties are quite complicated in detail. The basic principle is: don't walk were you aren't allowed to and don't bump some bot over. Bumping or pushing a robot while you're not fighting over the ball gets you an 30 seconds penalty. Injured robots are taken out as well. The goalie is the only player allowed to enter his team's penalty area. The striker and defender get a 30 seconds penalty as soon as they try. However we are all allowed to enter the other team's penalty area, even their goal. In the end, we aren't allowed to leave the field and neither harm humans. Oh how we tried.