HTWK Robots

Saturday, 26 February 2011

Mini RoboCup preparations in Berlin

This weekend we are heading towards Berlin. We got up early and started our trip at 7 a.m. We already have a RoboCup feeling. Thirty people are busy working on the robots, our host providing drinks and snacks and this evening are some talks and games. Here are some impressions.

Wednesday, 20 October 2010

Nao-Team HTWK at the Faculty-Rallye

To learn more about their faculty, computer science, mathematics and natural sciences freshers took part in a rallye around the campus at the 1^st October 2010. At every station they were quizzed to win a prize in the end.

One of the stations was (of course^^) our Nao-Team. 30 students in groups of 5 came to us to learn more about the robots and the Robocup.

Needless to say they were also allowed to play with Big Mike and Co. =)

Sunday, 17 October 2010

Nao-Team HTWK at MDR (Broadcast on 18.10.2010, 19:50)

The Nao-Team HTWK will be at the MDR show "Mach Dich Ran" on the 18th October 2010, 19:50! Here's the official announcement:

MDR / Mach Dich Ran

Happy watching!

Monday, 20 September 2010

Nao-Team HTWK at the "Mainzer Wissenschaftsgespräche"

The Nao-Team HTWK presents their talk "Mit evolutionären Algorithmen zum aufrechten Gang: Bipede Roboter im Praxistest" at the "Mainzer Wissenschaftsgespräche" on the 22. and 23. September as part of the German National Merit Foundations program.

The schedule can be found here.

Public TV appearance of the Nao-Team HTWK

Our Naos will appear in a German TV show?! Yes they will! On Saturday we record the show in a town called "Gössnitz" for the TV station called "MDR" and a show called "Mach dich ran!" (no we won't translate this into English...). We will update the blog as soon as the show is aired. See our last blog post for the Nao training sessions ;-)

Hacked Wiimotes for Nao control

We've hacked the Wiimote driver for the Linux kernel in oder to control the Naos via Bluetooth. This is a very nice feature for doing testgames against our AI.

Three new team members

New team members joined our Nao-Team HTWK within the last two months. We are very happy to officially welcome three new Computer Science graduate students

Katja Zeissler
Sandra Unger
Christoph Vitz

to our team!

Tuesday, 13 July 2010

Long Way Home

Greetings. This is Casey again. Today I will talk a little about our way back home to Germany.

After the world championships ended our team roughly had half a day to enjoy Singapore. The humans explored Singapore by using the local transports while I and the other robots relaxed in our hotel rooms. We've been too exhausted from all the games and shows so during their sightseeing we weren't willing to accompany them.

Soon enough, we had to leave the hotel and went to the airport enjoying the last views of Singapore during our taxi rides. One of the humans had to board his plane earlier that day, so four robots and five humans remained. Our takeoff was scheduled for midnight. We arrived at the airport just in time and were ready for boarding, but suddenly we found out that several technical problems occurred. Apparently, the engines of the 747 from Sydney to Singapore had unknown defects.

So we ended up in the preboarding room, watching the technicians working on the engine of our plane that was supposed to carry us home. We even found the time to perform some Nao acrobatics for some interested kids who stayed with us. After roughly two hours of waiting, the pilot told us that the technicians were done examining and repairing the engine. We finally boarded the plane and had our seats so the plane was ready for departure. Most of the passengers were shocked when the pilot decided to do emergency break in the middle of the takeoff. We rather remained calm as we are not as allergic to plane crashes as the humans are. Our critical parts only cease to function on temperatures above 5700 degrees Kelvin, according to our data sheet :) .

The pilot explained that one of the engines wasn't providing the thrust it needs for takeoff. After some more depressing time at the airport of almost doing nothing, they told us that our plane won't start in the near future and the crew of the plane need to get some rest for the next 10 hours while the technicians were still examining the engine. Hmm, we got stuck at the airport!

They offered a hotel room to the humans until the problems were fixed. In order to reach their hotel, the humans had to leave the international area of the airport again. As it turned out, we were considered as highly advanced and capable robots which are not allowed to enter the territory of Singapore without any proper customs documents. The forms we used about ten days ago were only valid for a single immigration, so we weren't allowed to leave the international ground on the airport anymore. We had to part ways with the humans for some time since they were seriously lacking sleep.

We've been dropped off in the lost luggage area for the night... playing with toys we found in the luggage of the humans. We also synchronized our emergency broadcast signal in case the plane has serious engine problems.

The humans were accommodated in a pretty impressive hotel called 'Sheraton Towers'. Well, it's a bit unfair since our accomodation is a small, uncomfortable IKEA family bag. They told us later that it was very impressive enjoying the breakfast and lunch there. On the next day, about 2pm, the plane seemed to be ready to have another try. The pilot told us that they were doing test flights earlier and all problems would have been solved. Anyways, for my part, I ran a self test on my software modules that allow me to swim. In the end the flight departed without further problems and we arrived in Germany about 12 hours later.

As you might have guessed already, we are back home happy and healthy. The humans are currently working on their exams and we are already preparing for the next German Open.

Saturday, 26 June 2010

Impressions from the banquet, Irish pub and the long way home ...

Shirt exchanges

You might have heard about the tradition to exchange shirts after the RoboCup ended. This time Daniel gave one of his shirts to the team from Israel. Furthermore, we wanted to thank people who helped us a lot at the convention center. One of them was the security guy at the entrance. He was our 'man in the middle' for the center management and put us through the people we needed in order to clarify problems, so he received a shirt, too. His response: "I will never forget you guys". Well, we found new friends in Singapore :-)

News about our last night in Singapore and our trip back to Germany

Our last night in Singapore was amazing. After the banquet all Nao teams met in an Irish pub, exchanged impressions from Singapore, research results of the Naos and did some small talk about their country, university and culture. After we changed the locations a few more times, all teams grew together, new international friendships formed and visit invitations around the globe came up.

Tobias is back in Germany. He had a very pleasant flight with Singapore Airlines while the others are still in Singapore. Their airplane was having an engine problem, so after more than 5 hours waiting at the airport Qantas booked a hotel (5 stars and within the top500 ... how amazing is this?) and they immigrated to Singapore once again. Back in Germany, Tobias booked a hostel near the train station in Frankfurt/Main and his night wasn't that quite - he shared a room with five Irish people. This was a hell of a noisy night.

Because of the flight delay we weren't able to use our tickets for the train to Leipzig. At that time the tickets were still in Singapore and Deutsche Bahn was unable to reprint tickets when all data (ticket number, owner, time) were only emailed ... so Tobias needed to charge the full price for another time ... yes, they could do better on the service quality and their software system.

Update: the others try to board the plane and will be in Frankfurt at 12 pm the next day.

Thursday, 24 June 2010

The final matches are over ...

The finals are over and the matches were really impressive. As expected, B-Human is the winner of the RoboCup 2010. The second place goes to rUNSWift from Australia and the third to Austin Villa from United States. Later this day, there will be a banquet for all teams and tomorrow is the conference. Our flights back to Germany are on Friday. The Internet will be shut down at 6 pm localtime, so this might be our last post until Saturday back in Germany. Hopefully we see each other at the RoboCup 2011 in Istanbul/Turkey.

Wednesday, 23 June 2010

Back to our hotel ...

... good night Singapore :-)

Nao-Team HTWK wins the Open Challenge!

We've won the Open Challenge since most teams voted for our research idea about robust vision without calibration! Thanks a lot! Again, a short description of our idea may be found here:

http://naoteam.imn.htwk-leipzig.de/documents/htwk_oc.pdf

Impressions from today

Have a look at Nils playing with a Nao, the mates preparing for our last match, Nils watching the Open Challenges, Casey being impatient to play, the start console for the last match and a deconstructed field (yeah, that is weird - there's still one day left until finish).