Open Challenge, Timetable and Results

We participated at the Open Challenge (like every year :)). Our presentation was about "Sparse Feature Learning for Visual Robot Angle Estimation" . After the results came back we've got a solid second place after BHuman.

The timetable for the upcoming days is ready as well as the result page. We try to upload the games as fast as possible in our YouTube channel.

And at the end: This is the whole SPL this year:

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Playing Schedule

Just some appointments:

Today the Open Challenge starts at 3pm.  We are going to present our robot detection, which not only determines the position of the other robots, but also the viewing direction of them.

Tomorrow our first matches are scheduled: 11 am versus UChile (from Santiago, Chile) and 14:20 versus RoboCanes (from Miami, USA)

Besides: 

The Local Organising Chair Duncan (left,
carrying his tablet in his pocket ;)

The guy responsible for the wifi configuration
is hunting for illegal wifi networks

Kicking Off RoboCup 2013

Yesterday we arrived in Eindhoven (The Netherlands) after a short trip of 3.5 hours from our stop-over in Frankfurt.

The space in the hall is a bit limited, as you can see in the pictures below, but the infrastructure is fabulous. Finally some proper wifi hardware and a good internet connection to upload videos!
But like every year they shut down the light in the hall too early (at 11 PM). ;-) But this didn't prevent us from taking the robots to the hotel. Our crazy coder-guys fixed bugs until 5 (!) AM, while we left the hotel at 8:30 this morning. Today we are looking forward to the first test games. Let's see!

Tables of Bembelbots (left) and us (right)

2 of the 4 SPL-Soccerfields

Resume Frankfurt Science Night

Our trip to Frankfurt was very helpful as we encountered some unknown problems and tested some new features in a real game.

Who would have guessed, light which is sufficient for humans can be so weak for robots, that they almost turn blind? That turned out to be one of the major problems as to why the first match at the Night of Science ended without a single goal. As for the rest of the night we played three more showgames, keeping not too tight to the official RoboCup rules ;)

The night was a full success, with many visitors at our field, so all that remains is that we are very grateful to the Bembelbots and the organisers for giving us this opportunity and their hospitality, and for the fun we had together :D

     

Night of Science - First Game 0:0

The first game of this night just ended 0:0.

Both teams had huge problems with light reflections on the field, which, as you can see, looked quite a bit like the white field lines.


We even tried to cover them with long rolls of cardboard and a pin board, but it wouldn't help.





But of course we also tested some experimental code, so let's see what the next game will bring ;)

Night of Science

And we're on the road again!


















The "Bembelbots" (Nao-Team of Frankfurt) invited us to the "Night of Science" organised by the students of the Goethe University Frankfurt. Since 5pm we are playing games, presenting the robots, entertaining kids and of course coding.

We'll be here until 6am, if we don't run out of coffee before that ;)











And as you can see in the pictures, we finally have a real teamshirt!

Spreadshirt sponsored us with 24 Shirts, thanks a lot!

German Open 2013: After the Games

After 5 long and exhausting days we finally returned to Leipzig. The tension of yesterday's games still remains in our heads and we took home a lot of impressions and ideas from this very satisfying event.

Now we are looking forward to the upcoming World Championships in July where we hope to see as thrilling games as in Magdeburg.

2nd place!!!

In a very competitive match we managed to score two goals against the former world champion B-Human and have therefore successfully claimed the second place in the German Open 2013.

After a very strong first half (score: 1:1) B-Human successfully defended their position at the head of the German Open competition with a final score of 7:2.

5:0 vs SPQR: We're in the finals!

We defeated the Italian team SPQR in the semi finals with an overwhelming score of 5:0.

After finishing the preliminary rounds, we are the team holding the second best overall score of 7, scored the second most goals of 18 and have the second biggest goal difference of 15.

The final match will be held at 15:00. Let's hope for an as interesting match.

We are in the semifinals!

The last Game of the day was our best so far!
We won 8:0 against the team DAInamite from Berlin.

Tomorrow we play against SPQR from Italy 

in the semifinal 

at 10 o'clock !

You can watch it at our Livestream:
http://robocup.imn.htwk-leipzig.de/pages/livestream.php?lang=de

Wish us luck!

Win!

We just won against Team Bembelbots (from Frankfurt)! Score 7:0 - yeah!

This really is a reward for the hard work and insufficient sleep of the past days!











Besides coding we always inspire people for humanoid robots and studies at HTWK-Leipzig

10:50 o'clock: A Draw

We did a draw against RoboEireann: 3:3. But they played with 4 Robots while we only used 1 :)

Okay.. maybe we should use more, but this way Starbuck could present himself in the best light ;)

First Match at 10:50

Don't miss it - Stream is online: http://robocup.imn.htwk-leipzig.de/pages/livestream.php?lang=de

The first match starts at 10:50 but because we could only test our Nao on the big field two times before today, we still have Problems with localization.
But we do our best to solve this problem as fast as possible.

And then there was darkness. Nao at night
(At Midnight the light was shutdown so we couldn't test anymore. Such a pitty!)

Livestream - Coming on Friday!

As mentioned before our games will be streamed, so you can watch them live! On our homepage the Livestream Link is ready, and the stream will get active on Friday.
http://robocup.imn.htwk-leipzig.de/pages/livestream.php?lang=de

Don't miss our first match Friday at 10:50.

Besides we were interviewed from a Reporter from MDR-Jump - you can hear it Friday, between 12-14 o'clock, exact time will be announced soon.

RoboCup GermanOpen 2013 in Magdeburg

Today we started really too early in the morning from Leipzig.

But thanks to this we now have much time for coding here in Magdeburg.
Now we can check and test the Software with the Nao's on the new big field!
We hope for good games on the following days.




On Saturday a Television-Team from MDR is going to be here and make a transmission.







You can watch it on the same day at 4 o'clock on MDR (German TV). Check:

http://www.mdr.de/tv/programm/sendung250562.html

German Open: Robocup 2013 Kickoff

We are all looking forward to the Robocup 2013. The first step will be the German Open in Magdeburg from April 26th to April 28th. Stay tuned for the new features we planned this year: revised teamplay and livestreams on our website. Further information will be available soon.

Supplement: CeBIT 2013

We were pleased to welcome the prime minister of Saxony, Stanislaw Tillich, at our stand at the CeBIT 2013. He was very interested the NAOs, the team and what we achieved. 

Looks like he found a friend in Starbuck.

Cebit 2013

We are part of the Cebit 2013. You can find us in Halle 9 Stand A10. Yesterday three different television stations and the press interviewed us. It's a great opportunity to show our work to the public and also that the HTWK Leipzig encourage students to create and work in interesting projects. Here some impressions of our booth and our team.

First RoBow of 2013

Currently we attending the first RoBow in 2013. Teams from different leagues meet in one city and prepare together the next German Open and World Championship. It's not completly only about working together it's also about having fun together. This was one of our pet projects at the Robow ;)

AUT Cup 2012 Trophy

As an update to our previous post, we now present the trophy and the certificate we received for winning the Amir Kabir University of Technology Robotics Competition last week.