A small step for the Robot, but a big step for the team

As usual business for us, we always check first the lighting conditions and the walking ability of our robots on the field.

For a very long time we are able to directly walk stable on the field without taking any additional changes, thanks to Thomas brilliant improvements during our preparation week before the Robocup.

Regarding lighting condition we have to face some small challenges, because for the robots it very dark on the field (~100 lux for those who are familiar with the topic).

But still we are basically able to play on first try 😎

First Preparation Day - Getting started

On a beautiful and chilly morning in Sydney we made our way to the venue. With an awesome motivation, sleepy eyes and high hopes we were looking forward to the event setup.

We like to share the view, which we had while having our breakfast 😊

Teamwork - All night long

It was a cold night (outside), but we as a team commited to one special mission! "Let us teach the robots, what a field border looks like!" 

You may ask why? We noticed our nine years old field border detection was showing signs of aging 😇

So we developed a new machine learning based detection yesterday night 😎

And to train this, we have to mark the field border in a lot of images 😒

So.. we practiced our team work and split up thousands of images to reach our goal.

All night long, but still with a happy face 😋

Spoiler Alert: Our robots are now able to detect the field border better then ever before 💓

Technical Committee members and Execs visiting the venue.

As part of the Robocup community we also take up responsibilities in different roles. So today Stefan as on of the elected technical committee member and Rico as an Exec visiting the venue to check the fields and the setup in general. Here are some impressions of the visit. All the fields and the rest of the installation will be finished tomorrow at the first setup day. Great to see everything is in place for the competition :-D

Feeling the grass and robot repairs

We visited the venue today to get a first look on the fields and get our robots repaired. One of our first checks is: which carpet was used as the artificial grass  and if we can walk on it. Here we see an expert to check the quality and properties.

Flo is checking the quality and properties of the grass.

Hello Australia! 🐨 Welcome to Sydney!

We did it! We survived 24h sitting in planes 😱 and finally arrived in Sydney. 😀 After a good night sleep to get rid of the jet lag we will be ready to start the day. 

  

Our longest Journey so far... Australia!

This is our longest journey so far. We are heading to Australia! :-D Our trip will take us from Frankfurt via a short stop over the United Arab Emirates to Sydney. This trip takes 24 hours and are round about 15900 km. Twenty teams have signed up for the RoboCup this year and everybody is already exited for the competition. So see you in Australia! We will keep you all in the loop. 

The traveling team this year: Caro, Rico, Stefan, Marvin and Flo.
Not shown here are Tobias and Thomas behind the camera.

Chip Shot

Thanks a lot for all the great feedback you all sent us regarding our cheerleading preview.

In addition to our cheerleading we are also working hard to improve our soccer gameplay. In the past we became known for our strong dribbling performance. In 2019 we want to bring new soccer moves to the table. Have a look at this chip shot we managed.

Of course, one of our Robots needs to play dead for this demonstration. But we can assure that nobot was harmed while working on our new shots.

Get Hyped for RoboCup 2019

Seven more days until RoboCup 2019 starts. This year the championship is held in Sydney, Australia.

Our Robotics Lab in Leipzig is bustling with activity of Robots and Humans. Working hard on gameplay improvements and lessons learned at RoboCup German Open 2019.

Of course, the team's spirits can't be allowed to drop when working long days in the summer heat. Thus, our Robots gave us a preview of their new cheerleading routine.

Stay tuned for more Robot footage in the coming days.

Opening of the new department "DIT" of the University of Applied Science (HTWK)

Coincident to the Hochschulsommerfest the opening of the new department DIT (Digitale Transformation) of the University of Applied Science (HTWK) was celebrated. Our team was invited to join them and present us two weeks before the RoboCup in Sydney.

Night of Science 2019 Finals

Enjoy watching our finals match against Bembelbots played during the Night of Science 2019 competition.

Night of Science 2019

At the moment we are visiting the Night of Science at Goethe Universität of Frankfurt am Main. Team Bembelbots invited us to this cosy Robot Event to play some exhibition matches and prepare for the RoboCup World Championship 2019.

At this two-day event we are present with six Robots and four Humans of Nao-Team HTWK.

We were happy to provide entertaining Robot Soccer matches for the visitors for a whole evening and night.

Special seating was provided for the young visitors, so they won’t miss one bit of the tense action in our games.

During exhibition games both Nao-Team HTWK (in blue) and Bembelbots (in Grey) elected to focus on their dribbling skills.

Team NomadZ from Zürich, Switzerland followed the Invitation as well. NomadZ distinguished themselves by having the best shooting skills of this Robot Event.

With their years of experience of attending Robot Soccer Events all teams participating were able to tune their motion skill to a very high level. We are happy to report that not a single robot was injured during exhibition matches.

At the conclusion of the first day teams Bembelbots and Nao-Team HTWK were able to reach the finals of our exhibition tournament. Accompanied by excited shouts of the visitors Nao-Team HTWK was able to win the finals match.

GermanOpen 2019 - Final

RoboCup GermanOpen 2019 - Second Place

After three competition days we are on the second place.  We had a incredible final match against B-Human, which we lost with 3:4. B-Human started very strong with 2:0 in the first half, but we managed to equalize the score to 3:3 near the end of the second half. Luckily for B-Human but unfortunately for us, one player of the Bremer Team scored the decisive goal 14 seconds before the whistle came.

We thank all visitors, watchers and readers for your support.

RoboCup GermanOpen 2019 - Day 3 Semi-finals HTWK vs. HULKs

We are in the finals!  😁🤖💕⚽️
After a furios match against the team HULKs from TU Hamburg we won with a score of 3:1. At 3:00 pm (15 Uhr) we'll play against B-Human for the championship.

RoboCup GermanOpen 2019 - Day 2 NomadZ vs. Nao-Team HTWK - Video

Watch the video of the game NomadZ against us on YouTube!

RoboCup GermanOpen 2019 - Day 2 NomadZ vs. Nao-Team HTWK

We won our last group stage game against NomadZ from Zürich with a score of 6:0.

Tomorrow we will play in the semi-finals.

A lots of visitors watched our games.

Also familiy and friends arrived at RoboCup in Magdeburg.

RoboCup GermanOpen 2019 - Day 1 End of Day

We had an awesome first competition day.

Bugs were fixed in our brand new software and we implemented cool new features. Therefore we won our two group stage games and had fun in refereeing other games.

RoboCup GermanOpen 2019 - Day 1 Nao-Team HTWK vs rUNSWift

We also won our second match against rUNSWift from Australia with 4:1.

RoboCup GermanOpen 2019 - Day 1 Nao-Team HTWK vs HULKs

Today, we won our first game against HULKs from Hamburg with 4:0.

Watch the video on YouTube: