RoboCup 2009

Yet another setup day

Yesterday we again had the chance to play exhibition matches since the official games will start today. We used the time to tweak parameters and improve the whole system. Especially the tuning of the collaboration between the single components, consisting of image processing, communication, behavior control and hardware, is very important.

In the first of the two exhibition matches we played yesterday we had to cope with the current world champion again. The oppent also tuned their system and showed a clearly stronger gameplay as they did in our first match. Nevertheless we could keep up, but we lost 0:2. Again we were able to gain a lot of information about which components have to be improved and which components need more tuning.

The second match was against MRL from Iran. We played very offensive and the match ended with 3:1. The goal against us evolved from a weird situation in our defense line: Our goalie wanted to clear a slow rolling ball and made a strong shot that was deflected by an opponent robot and rolled in back in our goal. This scene was more like pinball automat as it looked like a soccer game.

Our first official game will be today at 5 pm against RFC Cambridge, USA. Until then we will continue improving the details in our software and hardware.

We Win!

The last day was exactly like what we expected. We improved a lot of functions in our system which led us to win against RFC Cambride (a cooperation between the MIT and the Harvard University) with a 9:0 victory.

We are at a point without any visible gross errors. The farther the competition advanced the more we have to take care of the fine tuning in our behavior and we hope that our hardware will cope with hard stress during the matches. Especially facing Plasma-Z, which use very strong motors, we should be careful, since they play a rough style.

B-Smart will compete again at 12 p.m. against Owaribito-CU from Japan. This game will significant, since they seem to be the next better opponent after Plama-Z.

See you tomorrow..

Progress...

We made it! We passed the preliminary! There have been 2 successful days for out team in Graz. On Thursday we faced Owaribito-CU from Japan and won this onesided game with 6-0. On Friday the exercise became more ambitious, thus we could see more clearly where our weakening is. In the first match we had to compete with MRL. Although we won the test games against this team clearly, we saw a stronger opponent with an increased performance. MRL disturbed our ballplayer very soon and had a robust defensive. The only goal in this match we scored by a penalty, caused by a second defender in the box, who intercepted a clear scoring chance. During the match the spectators saw an eye-catching offensive performance by our team with a total of 3 hits on the post.

The second game on Friday we performed against the favorite team of our group and current champion Plasma-Z. We know that this team is much better than ours, especially because of the better hardware, e.g. brushless motors or a brutal but accurate kicker. The last time we played against Plasma-Z we had no chance and lost the game by 10-0. This year we were able to make it to the end and lost by 8-0. Nevertheless this time we had good opportunities to score one or two goals.

With this game the preliminary ended for us and we achieved the 2nd place in our group with 9 points. Before the quarter finals each 2nd placed team of a group have to face a 3rd placed team of the neighbor group. All winners of the matches at this so called "Lucky Losers" round will play the quarter finals. In our case we play against our german partner team ER-Force from Erlangen.

In the last days the every year's technical challenge took place. Until now two of the three disciplines were played. In the first one we had to pass the ball several times and finally to kick it into the goal. In that discipline we share the 3rd place with the CMDragons from Pittsburgh, USA. In the second one, the so called navigation challenge, we had to drive an eight using obstacle avoidance. Here we achieved the 4th place, because we had problems start the system.

Today there will be the last disciple, the mixed team challenge. The ambition is to play one color with different teams and again performing passes and goalshots.

Now we're going to get the ball rolling again. See you soon.

Beaten by a hairs breadth...

The match against Erlangen in the Lucky Losers game was ended by a 1-0 victory for us. The opponent was quite hard, since our teams met for testing week in July. Serveral times we were missing luck shooting against the goalpost or the goalie. After all a well-created chance led to the crucial goal.

In the quarter finals we had to copete against RoboDragons from Japan. The last clash againt them was in Atlanta 2007 where we lost 0-10. Because of that old result we were looking forward to this match. The gameplay was really varied with a huge amount of scoring chances on both sides. Although the RoboDragons are faster than we are, our defensive behaviour blocked passing and shooting possibilities. Finally a penalty kick 3 minutes before end of time led to the result 1-0, because our defender was illigally in the defense area to clear the ball.

Though we were eliminated like the other two years in the quarter finals, we are satisfied with our performance. The years before we were shot out of the tournament by 0-10.

Today we are going to watch the final with RoboDragons against Skuba and other finals from other leagues, before we pack our bags to drive back home on monday. We would like to thank all readers and igus® for the support.