Video update: Cerberus - Second half

Resting...

Not only robots need to rest sometimes...

Video update: Cerberus - First half

Upcoming preparations for the Technical Challenge ...

The match against Ceberus was the last match for today. We are now heading to the Technical Challenge. One part of it is to successfully pass the ball from one player to another.

Video update: NimbRo - Second half

Nao-Team HTWK - Cerberus: 2 - 0!

We've won against Cerberus with 2 goals! Yeah!

Video update: NimbRo - First half

Prizes, prizes, prizes, ....

You may wonder: What is the prize except the honor to be the best soccer playing robot team in world? Take a look at the great prizes that are waiting for the world leading teams!

Nao-Team HTWK - Nimbro: 2 - 3!

That was definitely a game with a huge amount of adrenalin. A few minutes before the game started, one of our robots needed to be repaired and the fourth one wasn't ready to play either. So again, this time we only played with two. NimbRo is one of the best German teams,  whose AI is based on B-Humans. For a certain time we were tie for the lead. If the game had run 10s further, it definitely would have been a tie! Unfortunately, we've lost with one goal difference. Next game will be on 5pm.

Video update is comming soon.

Good morning!

Yesterday, we've reached the first place in our group. Today, we are playing in the second group round, so our first match will be against
Nimbro. More upcoming matches will be against Cerberus and Austrian Kangaroos. We are looking forward to it!

Another amazing day ends...

... and we are heading home. See you tomorrow :)

Impressions from Monday

What do you see? A match that is played with only a few viewer, a mess of cables and batteries, the referee and team manager meeting and last but not least: us working on our robots.

Video update: Les 3 Mousquetaires - Second half

Currently not in 16:9 available, will be updated soon.

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.

Video update: Les 3 Mousquetaires - First half

Nao-Team HTWK - Les 3 Mousquetaires: 2 - 0!

We're first of the "First Round Robin Pool H" and won against Les 3 Mousquetaires with 2-0!

Video Update: Match against Nothern Bites

Is currently processing by youtube and you can watch in ca. 30 min :)

Nao-Team HTWK - Northern Bites: 3 - 0!

We've won our first game against Northern Bites (last years RoboCups runners-up) with 3-0! Awesome! The first half was without any goal. The video of the second half is currently uploading and we will blog it asap.

Back in convention center

We are back in convention center and are working on localization calibration and teamplay testing for our first real match at 11 am.

Yesterday, we completely forgot dinner, so we were heading towards "Brotzeit" a German restaurant on our way home (but somehow managed to end up in an Italian restaurant) and enjoyed potato wedges with remoulade. Well, we saw the last few minutes of the real soccer world championship match Italy vs Kiwiland.

We are heading home...

... it was eventful day and on Monday is our first real match. The air condition has been shut down and its starting to get hot in here... So see you tomorrow!