Nao-Team HTWK

Nao-Team HTWK : NTU Robot PAL - 2 : 4!

2011-07-10T12:03:00.004+02:00

Deja vu! We've lost against NTU, again, and again with 2 : 4! This results in an overall 4th place for us (out of 27 teams)! With this result we've achieved a new high-score for our team! This years world championship was so great and we are so happy about our achievements! Also, kudos to our other team members, who couldn't be here, namley Manuel, Samuel, Martin, Hannah, Sandra, Christoph and Katja, and of course huge thanks to our advising professors, Prof. Klaus Bastian and Prof. Karl-Udo Jahn, the Leipzig University of Applied Sciences for financial support as well as this years sponsors: malberg EDV-Systemberatung, EUREGEX and focus GmbH! Now it's time for us to become "social" again, to celebrate with the others and last but not least to get some sleep! :-)

Update: Videos of the games are published successively within the blog posts that contains game results.

First Half:

Second Half:

Teams of the Standard Platform League, 2011

2011-07-10T10:40:00.000+02:00

Nao-Team HTWK : B-Human - 0 : 5!

2011-07-10T09:17:00.002+02:00

It was a great game though we've lost 0 : 5 against the former world champion! According to B-Human we've been their "hardest" opponent until now. This is very nice to hear and we've tried our best to keep them struggling! The second game in the semifinal is NTU Robot PAL (with a B-Human code base) against Nao Devils, which will start in about 15 min. We are very curious about our opponent in the final game at noon for the 3rd place.

First Half:

Second Half:

Impressions from today ...

2011-07-09T20:08:00.003+02:00

The open challenge is over by now and we are done touching the source code of our robots. :-) After these last intense moments, we will grab some beers with our last opponents and the rest of the RoboCup teams. Good night fellas. :-)

Some more pictures from today:

Nao-Team HTWK : rUNSWift - 5 : 2! YES, YES, YES!!!

2011-07-09T19:13:00.007+02:00

Guys, we've won against the former vice world champion, rUNSWift, with 5 : 2! So awesome! We are all so thrilled! The video will be online soon! With this win, we've reached the semifinals! The game is tomorrow 9 am against B-Human. By the way ... three German teams have reached the semifinals!

Thomas, you owe us a bottle of whiskey! :-)

First Half:

Second Half:

Nao-Team HTWK : WPI - 7 : 0!

2011-07-09T16:28:00.002+02:00

Quarterfinal!!! We've won against WPI and are first in the Second Round Robin Round! With this, we've reached the quarterfinal of this world championship and belong to the top 8 teams (out of 27)! We are so happy about this! Amazing! The next game, this time within quarterfinal, will be against team rUNSWift from Australia! Tough challenge! Stay tuned!

First Half:

Second Half:

Nao-Team HTWK : CMurfs - 5 : 1!

2011-07-09T11:25:00.002+02:00

Yeaaaahh!!! We've won against CMurfs (Carnegie Mellon University) with 5 : 1! Awesome! :-)

First Half:

Second Half:

Nao-Team HTWK : WrightEagleUnleashed - 3 : 0!

2011-07-09T09:53:00.002+02:00

Good news everyone, we've won against WrightEagleUnleashed with 3 : 0! Videos will be published soon. By the way, some videos of the last games can already be found within the related blog posts. Out next game will be at 11:40 am against CMurfs!

First Half:

Second Half:

Impressions of day 3

2011-07-08T21:23:00.002+02:00

Day 3 is nearly over. We've won two out of two matches and reached the second intermediate round which will be challenged by tomorrow, so tomorrow will be the decision whether we will reach the quarterfinal or not. You may wish us success and a quantum of luck! :-) Our first game starts on 10 am against WrightEagleUnleashed. Stay tuned!

Nao-Team HTWK : L3M - 4 : 0!

2011-07-08T15:22:00.004+02:00

We've won against L3M with 4 : 0! With the winning of this match, we got into the next round, namely 'Second Round Robin Pool' together with CMurfs, WPI and WrightEagleUnleashed. Our next game will be tomorrow 10 am against WrightEagleUnleashed!

First Half:

Second Half:

RoboCup Live Stream

2011-07-08T13:43:00.000+02:00

A live stream from the RoboCup is also available here:

We're in TV ;-)

2011-07-08T13:37:00.000+02:00

The RoboCup 2011 made it into the Turkish TV news. In the first two videos, you can see us or our robots (the ones with their arms behind their backs) in the background:

http://tv.interpress.com/video/9670599.mpg
http://tv.interpress.com/video/9670026.mpg
http://tv.interpress.com/video/9668878.mpg
http://tv.interpress.com/video/9668793.mpg

Nao-Team HTWK : Noxious-Kouretes - 3 : 0!

2011-07-08T10:33:00.006+02:00

Today, we've won our first game this day against Noxious-Kouretes with 3 : 0! The game was very exciting and had some funny moments, too. Videos will be published soon. 2 minutes before the end, the robots lost their Wifi connection and ran chaos, but luckily no own goal was scored during this time. Well, it seems, that the Wifi issue still exists on our side. Next to this, other teams have also reported that their Video4Linux mmap(2) interface has problems getting new image frames due to bugs in the AMD video driver from Aldebaran. We've experienced same issues last year during development and therefore switched to the slower Aldebaran API with an optimized memcpy(2), so no problems on our side in this regard. (But please, please, please ... next time, use a WRT54GL!)

Anyways, our next game will be within the intermediate round against L3M on 3:40 pm.

First Half:

Second Half:

Taxi driving is the new rally driving!

2011-07-08T07:47:00.000+02:00

Whenever you have the chance, grab a taxi in Istanbul - it's lots of fun! One could think, that the taxi drivers here were former rally drivers! We get here in approx. one-eight of the time compared to the usual shuttle bus and whenever a road sign says 30, the taxi drivers multiply this by 4! :-)

Day 2 nearly over ...

2011-07-07T21:48:00.002+02:00

The second day is nearly over and we are about to be kicked out since it is nearly 11pm. We've lost one match and won one match, found lots of bugs in the current code and still continue to fix them. The issues with the uplink decreased, but are not gone so far. Lots of teams have problems with the Wifi connection between their robots and the fields Access Points. Once a robot has been kicked from the WLAN, it does not reconnect automatically and the wireless configuration/hardware(?) in general seems to be broken at all. Besides others, we've nearly spend two whole days fixing the networking on the robots, but we think we have solved this now.

And the most important thing: Happy birthday to Thomas! :-)

Stay tuned!

Nao-Team HTWK : Portuguese Team - 5 : 0!

2011-07-07T17:25:00.003+02:00

We've won against the Portuguese Team with 5 : 0!

And again, ... continuous uplink problems to the ISP because of loops in the network! :-(

Our next game will be by tomorrow, 10:40 am against Noxious-Kouretes.

First Half:

Second Half:

Nao-Team HTWK : NTU Robot PAL - 2 : 4!

2011-07-07T10:43:00.003+02:00

Our first match is over and sadly we have lost with 2 : 4. All in all, is was a fair game and NTU Robot PAL was a tough opponent.

On 5 pm we have our next game against the Portuguese team!

First Half:

Second Half:

Timetable

2011-07-07T07:49:00.001+02:00

The timetable for the matches can be found on http://www.tzi.de/spl/bin/view/Website/Timetable2011 and results will be put here http://www.tzi.de/spl/bin/view/Website/Results2011.

Our first game will be against a very strong opponent, namely Team NTU Robot PAL from Taiwan. NTU took the B-Human code release and enhanced it on many aspects. They are also the only team we know of, who are able to locate their positions of a robot with the help of their other robots. By this, the Nao who dribbles the soccer ball doesn't need to locate himself and the goals in every situation - the other team mates might already have done this for him.

So you see our first game won't be easy for us - wish as luck! :-)

Türkiye'ye Hoşgeldiniz!

2011-07-06T15:39:00.001+02:00

Hello! this is Casey again. I'm a Robot of the Nao-Team HTWK and I'd like to give you some impressions from the Contest like i did at the German Open this year.

We already arrived and settled down as you can read in the posts the humans of our team wrote earlier. The competition site is quite nice. We got four fields to play on like we did at the competition in Singapore last year. We already did some test runs on the fields. We still are able to track the ball across the field despite the different light conditions. The goalposts are a lot more sturdy than last year which is a good thing and the field lines are arranged properly.

We already did several big and small training session with other teams. We are quite happy with our progress so far but there is always room for improvement. Luckily we have found a very effective method to train a wide variety of skills at once. See a picture of a training session below.

A trip home, first testgames and a lot networking trouble

2011-07-06T15:24:00.001+02:00

Yesterday, we left the Expo Center at 11pm and grabbed something to eat on the way. It is impressiv how the city changes its face by night. By day nobody seems to be on the street but at night ... life pulsates at every coner of the city. See yourself.

What should we say? Life is not that easy as it seems. There are days where everything is possible and the are days where the wireless network is broken beyond all repair. ;) But there also postive news. We completed already the first two test games against B-Human and MRL. As you can see, the test games were of some interest to the other teams. This was also a great opportunity to test our new code and we already found and fixed a few bugs. The rest of the day we will try to fix the wireless setup and prepare for our first real game tomorrow.

Day 1: The Setup

2011-07-05T19:02:00.002+02:00

Soon, our first day will be over. Nearly the whole day, the uplink to the Internet/ISP was somehow broken (mostly due to loops in the network on unmanaged switches), but the "chaos" is finally decreasing. This years soccer fields got a bit too much yellow, but after a first check with our Naos, it seems pretty okay for us. Sadly, one has to take a longer walk for the next Starbucks or shopping opportunity and only a handful of people speak English in the whole area. Nevertheless, it's a very nice feeling to see old RoboCup faces and to exchange experiences and new ideas with our colleagues from all over the world.

Hello from Istanbul!

2011-07-05T01:49:00.004+02:00

All team members are finally in Istanbul, some of them departed from Berlin, some from Belfast or Zurich - in the end we all met at the Istanbul airport. Our first impression of Istanbul was spectacular. A vibrant city that obviously never sleeps. So many people together in one place.
The registration of our robots at the customs was without any problems; they even had a large picture of a Nao sticked near their office, so that RoboCups participants immediately knew where to go.

After picking up our luggage, we faced our first challenges at the metro station with
buying tickets. Everything is Turkish and rarely people who speak English. A 'ticket' is defined as buying a chip (so called Jetons) for passing the barriers to the metro. We then check-in to our hotel which is near a big main road and the air corridor of the Ataturk airport. Nevertheless, the hotel room is really quite and very nice! After freshing up a bit, we've checked out the nearby area and had a light evening meal. We are already looking forward for tomorrow!

Good night, Nao-Team HTWK

Arriving at the airport

2011-07-04T10:09:00.001+02:00

We checked in our luggage and wait to board our plane. Our other team mates do the same in Zürich and Belfast.

We are heading towards Berlin

2011-07-03T19:57:00.001+02:00

Currently we are heading towards Berlin. We plan to hack the night on our robots and tomorrow at 11am we take off to Istanbul.

3rd place match: Nao-Team HTWK VS. Robo Eirann

2011-04-16T22:51:00.000+02:00

Nao-Team HTWK vs. Robo Eirann

This match is the fight for the 3rd place. It was played at the Robocup German Open 2011 in Magdeburg, Saxony Anhalt, Germany. It is the second match between Nao-Team HTWK and Robo Eirann at the German Open 2011. The first one was played during the group stages.

Semifinal: Nao-Team HTWK VS. B-Human

2011-04-16T22:46:00.000+02:00

Nao-Team HTWK vs. B-Human

This match is part of the semifinals. It was played at the Robocup German Open 2011 in Magdeburg, Saxony Anhalt, Germany.

Nao-Team HTWK VS. Bembelbots

2011-04-16T22:36:00.000+02:00

Nao-Team HTWK vs. Bembelbots

Played at the Robocup German Open 2011 in Magdeburg, Saxony Anhalt, Germany.

Nao-Team HTWK vs. Noxious

2011-04-08T03:33:00.001+02:00

Nao-Team HTWK vs. Noxious

Played at the Robocup German Open 2011 in Magdeburg, Saxony Anhalt, Germany.

Nao-Team HTWK VS. RFC. St.Ellingen

2011-04-07T23:51:00.000+02:00

Nao-Team HTWK vs. RFC. St.Ellingen

Played at the Robocup German Open 2011 in Magdeburg, Saxony Anhalt, Germany.

Nao-Team HTWK VS. Robo Eireann

2011-04-07T18:32:00.000+02:00

Nao-Team HTWK vs. Robo Eireann

Played at the Robocup German Open 2011 in Magdeburg, Saxony Anhalt, Germany.

Nao-Team HTWK VS. NimbRo SPL 2nd Half

2011-04-07T14:49:00.002+02:00

Nao-Team HTWK vs. NimbRo SPL - 2. Half

Played at the Robocup German Open 2011 in Magdeburg, Saxony Anhalt, Germany.

Nao-Team HTWK VS. NimbRo SPL 1st Half

2011-04-07T10:00:00.002+02:00

Hi are currently uploading the videos of the German Open 2011. More will be published during the next few days.

Nao-Team HTWK vs. NimbRo SPL - 1. Half

Played at the Robocup German Open 2011 in Magdeburg, Saxony Anhalt, Germany.

Back at the HTWK Leipzig

2011-04-04T11:29:00.001+02:00

After the award ceremony finished (thanks to everyone for the applause!), we packed our stuff and headed towards home. We had a lot fun and made great experiences this year during the German Open 2011. It was a very exciting competition and we can say for sure, that the SPL grew together a bit more, not only because the SPL teams took part in the social event 2.0, which was organised by the teams of the SPL and held after the official RoboCup social event. We would also like to thank all people who made this competition possible for us: the organisers, our team mates who couldn't participate, our professors, the HTWK Leipzig and families back home. The next days we will revise our ideas and start to focus on our Istanbul strategy.

From left to right: Thomas Reinhardt, Rico Tilgner, Stefan Seering and Tobias Kalbitz

Socks and Tape

2011-04-04T00:04:00.012+02:00

The team Nao-Devils was refereeing one of our games. Unfortunately their designated referees where ill and some other members of the Nao-Devils were asked to act as referees during the match. There is a dress code for referees which says you have to wear black socks and jeans so you wont disturb the robots. So what to do if the socks you wear match the color of the field lines? Improvise!

Party Time!

2011-04-03T13:36:00.001+02:00

Hey! This is Casey speaking again!

We finished our last game for this championship! We made it to the third place of the German Open 2011. We got some free time now as we don't have to play till the world championship in July. So we decided to make a social event for us robots like the humans of our team did yesterday. Currently we are partying with the bots of the team CoolRUNners. They even brought their own mascot to party with us. Below you can find a picture of Big Mike and their mascot after a few sips of rum and coke.

Nao-Team HTWK vs. RoboEireann - 10:0!

2011-04-03T12:13:00.001+02:00

This was an unbelievable game and we've done it! There was an legendary game situation when our goalie decided to get also some action and fought against all opponent players and scored a goal. That's it we achieved the third place in the RoboCup German Open 2011. We will watch the final at 2pm. We will upload the videos soon. Stayed tuned :-)

Our last game in this championship

2011-04-03T10:47:00.001+02:00

In a few seconds we will face RoboEireann. The winner of the match will be awarded with the 3rd place at the RoboCup German Open 2011.

Every strategy was discussed. Every move was studied. Every reference ball was found. Now we just can do one thing:

Five Star Service

2011-04-03T09:14:00.001+02:00

'Sup? Fully relaxed Casey talking here. While continuing my roundtrip to visit the robots of the other leagues i have found some extremely handy guys to hang around with! They will bring you food and drinks if you need some!

The robots of the team Tech United are participating in two Leagues. The ones i just talked to are in the RoboCup@Home League. According to their description it sounds like they are trying to live together with humans in a most comfortable way for both, Robots and Humans. They are focusing on things like memorizing the faces of all humans they meet, and of course try to recognize them if they meet the same person a second time later that day. Their handling of humans is quite impressive. They are able to move around in a flat or following a human without damaging stuff or running somebot over. They even hand over a drink from the fridge if the human if the human says pretty please. Thats the way to tame your human! Positive feedback if the human is submissive! Even I was offered a refreshing drink! Ahh, just what i needed after a hard day. Their way to talk to the humans is much more sophisticated compared to our way of communication with the human members of our team.

Are you lost?

2011-04-02T21:12:00.004+02:00

Hey! This is is Casey speaking again. I'm a robot of the Nao-Team HTWK. The humans of our team are slacking of at the "Social Event" at the moment so I figured I should show you the other robot leagues of the German Open like I did last year.

The first team I want to introduce you to is the team Hector Darmstadt. They are participating in the Rescue Robot League. This league was founded so robots can learn how to help humans in case of emergency. The humans at the competition site will build a wooden maze with hidden puppets and different kinds of obstacles. As soon as the competition begins the robots will explore the maze. Checking for accessible paths and reporting every found "victim" to the humans.

Big wheels or continuous tracks are used to travel through the maze as their terrain is much harder to overcome than our green fields. There is a lot to take note of in the maze. Hence a much bigger variety of sensors is allowed for them compared to our rules of play.

Nao-Team HTWK : B-Human - 1 : 6!

2011-04-02T19:19:00.000+02:00

The match is over and ended with a score of 1:6. As a result the 3rd place will be decided between the team RoboEireann and us tomorrow at 11:00.

First Half: HTWK vs. B-Human - 1:3!

2011-04-02T17:00:00.001+02:00

The first half is over and we managed to do something no other team was able to do so far! We actually scored a goal against the current world champion and put our nose in front! All other games of B-Human ended with 0 goals for their opponents. Our luck had turned soon and B-Human scored three additional goals but not without a fight. There were several dangerous game situations for B-Human. The The total score is 1:3 and we cant await the second half.

Nao-Team HTWK : Noxious - 6 : 0!

2011-04-02T16:10:00.001+02:00

Another win! This time against team Noxious. It was the last game of the second group round. All games from this point on will be knock out games.

Out first knock out game will be played at 16:30. The opponent is the current world champion B-Human.

Nao-Team HTWK : Bembelbots - 7 : 0!

2011-04-02T13:19:00.000+02:00

This time, we've won against Bembelbots with 7 : 0!

Nao-Team HTWK : Nimbro - 2 : 4!

2011-04-01T18:37:00.002+02:00

This game was one of the toughest situations we've ever faced. We started with three robots. Our fourth had problems to boot. In the first half we scored two goals you would dream about and got one goal against us. The tide changed after four pushing from one of our robots. The rules are clear that one had to get rejected from the game. Half-time result was 2:2.

In the second half our rejected robot was back in the game. After four further pushings our striker had to be rejected and after two additional pushings our defender also was rejected. So our goalie was the last man standing... he fought like a lion against the four opponents and we saw some awesome game situations but in the end Nimbro scored two additional goals.

We hope to upload our video data in the evening when the internet connection is more reliable, so you can see the huge progress we made in the last months.

A Frenchmen, a Dutchman and a Russian walk into a bar ...

2011-04-01T16:22:00.005+02:00

Hello, Casey speaking again.

I was just chatting with some robots of the team L3M from France and Spain. We were just talking about the usual stuff. I was complimenting them for their nice hats. Turns out they are a bunch of really nice guys. They also told me that their humans wanted to eat something typical German today. I was listing some of the stuff our humans are eating usually and in in the end all of them ordered a Wiener Schnitzel (at an Indian restaurant) today.

We are currently preparing for our only game for today. In roughly 20 minutes we will face the robots of team NimbRo. This time i will play as the goalie. Below you can see some pictures of us preparing for the match. It shows us practicing our ball recognition.

A new beginning or day two

2011-04-01T11:12:00.000+02:00

We arrived a hour ago at our table. Right now we are assisting referee in the game Nao Devils vs coolRUNners. Out next (and only) game will be at 16:30 against NimbRo. If you like to see the Naos in action visit us on Saturday. This is the most exciting day in the hole RoboCup.

Nao-Team HTWK : St.Ellingen - 10 : 0!

2011-03-31T23:18:00.006+02:00

St. Ellingen had problems with compiling their source code and also fought with segmentation faults. So there was no opponent on the field and we played the first time a perfect game. Tobias kept his promise and sponsored a crate of beer. All in all, the first day was amazing and we're looking forward to the next ones! :-)

Nao-Team HTWK : Robo Eireann - 6 : 0!

2011-03-31T19:52:00.006+02:00

Hey! Exhausted Casey speaking here.

We just finished our first match and were able to score 6 goals in an exciting game! Extra credits to our goalie Chuck who didn't miss a single ball. Also big thanks to Robo Eireann for the great game - their goalie made us really fight for every single score.

I'm sure the humans will upload the recordings of the game later this evening. Our next game will be around 21:40 CET.

First German Open game: B-Human vs. L3M

2011-03-31T12:38:00.001+02:00

The first game this year starts within minutes. The results and also the schedule for the next few days can be found here. Aldebaran also arrived at 9 a.m. and our robots are still being repaired.

Hello from Casey!

2011-03-31T11:43:00.003+02:00

Hello and Welcome! This is Casey again. I'm a robot of the Nao-Team HTWK and was asked to give you some impressions of the championship like I did last year. Yesterday, all teams were arriving here at the competition site and set their equipment up. Also, we were meeting old friends and got to know new teams. This year teams from Greece, France, Wales, Ireland and Germany are participating in the Games in our league. We weren't able to look around so far to see who travelled to Germany to participate in the other leagues, but I'm sure i will find some time for that later.

Today, the first games will take place in our league. We will be refereeing our first game at 16:00. The time of our first game isn't decided yet, but likely will be around 14:00. Our first opponent will be the team Robo Eireann. We are really looking forward to it. Today the exhibition opens up for the public as well. So if you are close to Magdeburg, Saxony Anhalt, Germany feel free to visit us.

The initial referee meeting hast just finished and i think i should get back to preparing the match. I'll write more late and hope to find some comments from you as well.

"Advanced guiding" research and missing repairs

2011-03-30T20:32:00.001+02:00

Our research on "advanced guiding" our Naos (see image) was instantly adapted by some other teams - that's the sharing-knowledge spirit of the RoboCup. ;-) But there are also downsides: three of our four robots need an urgent repair, but Aldebaran hasn't arrived yet. Our first game is tomorrow at 14:30, so let's hope to have at least two working robots.

German Open - First Day - Setup

2011-03-30T11:45:00.003+02:00

Our ride to Magdeburg was straightforward and without any traffic jams. After we arrived, the first thing for us to do was to set up our infrastructure. At this point the Internet connection seemed stable and after buying some groceries, we were working on the last topics on our to-do list. We also welcomed a large number of other teams. Only a few SPL teams are still missing.

Mini RoboCup preparations in Berlin

2011-02-26T11:48:00.000+01:00

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.

Nao-Team HTWK at the Faculty-Rallye

2010-10-20T16:49:00.004+02:00

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. =)

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

2010-10-17T18:45:00.000+02:00

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!

Nao-Team HTWK at the "Mainzer Wissenschaftsgespräche"

2010-09-20T21:37:00.001+02:00

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

2010-09-20T21:17:00.003+02:00

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

2010-09-20T20:58:00.002+02:00

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

2010-09-20T20:36:00.002+02:00

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!

Long Way Home

2010-07-13T23:55:00.005+02:00

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.

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

2010-06-26T13:41:00.003+02:00

Shirt exchanges

2010-06-26T13:30:00.002+02:00

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

2010-06-26T06:53:00.008+02:00

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.

The final matches are over ...

2010-06-24T10:34:00.000+02:00

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.

Back to our hotel ...

2010-06-23T16:26:00.001+02:00

... good night Singapore :-)

Nao-Team HTWK wins the Open Challenge!

2010-06-23T16:17:00.000+02:00

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

2010-06-23T15:08:00.000+02:00

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).

Building bridges between countries and making new friends

2010-06-23T14:12:00.000+02:00

Earlier today "Les 3 Mousquetaires" came around and gave us team shirts. This is a very big-hearted gift. Thank you guys we will cherish it :-)

Video update: Austin Villa - Second half

2010-06-23T14:07:00.003+02:00

Video update: Austin Villa - First half

2010-06-23T12:37:00.003+02:00

Video update: Austrian Kangaroos - Second half

2010-06-23T11:12:00.001+02:00

Video update: Austrian Kangaroos - First half

2010-06-23T10:54:00.001+02:00

This Midsummer Night's Dream is over: Nao-Team HTWK - Austin Villa: 1 - 3!

2010-06-23T10:31:00.006+02:00

Well, unfortunately our Midsummer Night's Dream is over, we've lost with two points difference in the Quarter Finals against a really difficult opponent: Austin Villa from USA. Our robots gave their best. This time one of our robot even completely broke his neck and in fact with highly exhaustion our goalie scored one own goal. This is definitely no loss, we gained so much amazing experiences and impressions and we're one of the 8 best SPL teams in the world!

We would like to thank our faculty, all professors and our sponsors who made our trip to Singapore possible. Furthermore, we would like to thank all others who supported and shared the thrill with us before and during the RoboCup 2010 world championship.

Video updates, some more images and posts are coming soon.

In the back Stefan, Tobias, Rico. In the front Nils, Daniel and Thomas.

Open Challange is over ...

2010-06-23T08:31:00.000+02:00

... and we are quite satisfied. But have a look for yourself:

SPL @ RoboCup 2010

2010-06-23T06:38:00.002+02:00

A photo of all team members from the Standard Platform League.

Nao-Team HTWK - Austrian Kangaroos: 2 - 1!

2010-06-23T05:18:00.001+02:00

Yes! We've won again and reached the Quarter Finals! :-)

Open Challenge: robust vision without calibration

2010-06-23T04:31:00.000+02:00

Here you'll find our Open Challenge description that has been proposed yesterday. Every team is free to post ideas and research about everything that is related to the Nao robots. Our contribution is about robust vision without calibration:

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

3:30 am and the ceiling light is still on

2010-06-23T04:03:00.002+02:00

Last night some of us continued their hacking session back at the hotel room, since the light and even the Internet has been shut down early at the conference hall (!). Did some robot calibration, code review and testing. Well, we faked the green carpet and set up Tobias jacket, but it worked! Thank god there's a Starbucks at our location. What a hell of a night ;-)

The color pink

2010-06-23T03:29:00.001+02:00

Greetings! This is Casey again.

Some vigilant readers pointed out that the color of the waistbands is pink and not magenta. As I said: I'm not really watching for these, so please forgive me for this little mistake.

But now to the important things:

Today I quickly scampered away while the humans were sleeping or slacking off (see that earlier blog entry). I met some teams of the other leagues (after luring their humans off into a storage room and locking the door). There are some really nice bots around here and I think you should get to know them too.

The first ones I've met are the ones of the small size league. They are playing soccer as well on an six times four meters big field. When they are playing it's always like watching a sworm of zerglings (or colony of ants if you're more familiar with that). They are playing in teams of 5 robots, which are watched by cameras from above. They are working together with a controlling computer, which is located off of the field. The controller watches the game by using cameras, gives his team hints about where the ball is located at and where to drive. These robots use wheels for moving and achieve quite a impressive speed and acceleration. Even for their small size. While chatting, they recommended me to visit the middle size league, which is two floors above ours.

The robots of the middle size league are like the big brothers of the small size league. They are moving on wheels as well, but are playing soccer on a much bigger field. They play in teams of six using a eighteen meters long and twelve meters wide field. The robots reach quite impressive heights, so they can carry their own PC's and laptops. Each one carries at least one camera, usually providing an 360 degree field of view. Of course they are packing quite a punch, making them shoot the ball through the whole hall from time to time. Their acceleration is impressive as well. During the German Open I watched one of their goalies shredding pieces out of the wooden goal when he decided its better to enter the goal from the solid side instead using the front opening. They are also the first robots who learned to propel the ball up into the air and hit the goal in the upper corner. Hmmm maybe I should try that, too.

I spotted more walking robots as I returned to my floor. The bigger one is playing in the teen size league. We were chatting about several walking techniques and stuff. He told me that the teams in his league are all looking different. They are all designed and build by their human team members and play soccer as well in a field like ours. Hmmm maybe I should ask the biggest one of them to join our team. He covers the whole goal area when he sprawls out.

The smaller one is a member of the kid size league. They are a little bit smaller than the the teen sized ones - at most 30 centimeters high while the teen sized ones might be twice as high. The teen and the middle sized leagues are playing with at most three robots on the field, like we do. I was watching them for a while and I have to admit that they are walking quite fast for two legged robots. For the moment I can't keep up with their speed, but I'm sure I'll improve my way of walking till next year.

OK, I think I should return and wake the humans now. We still got work to do!

Heading into the night ...

2010-06-23T03:19:00.000+02:00

Like every night, air condition shuts down and we are heading back to our hotel. It was a interesting day with great results and discussions. Tomorrow is one of the most important matches to reach the quarter final, so wish us good luck!

Impressions from Tuesday

2010-06-22T16:27:00.003+02:00

What you see here ... before breakfast; a crowd watching a game; a NimBro team member watching their robot; argumentation and testing the robot.

Video update: Cerberus - Second half

2010-06-22T15:06:00.000+02:00

Resting...

2010-06-22T14:26:00.000+02:00

Not only robots need to rest sometimes...

Video update: Cerberus - First half

2010-06-22T14:17:00.000+02:00

Upcoming preparations for the Technical Challenge ...

2010-06-22T12:50:00.000+02:00

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

2010-06-22T12:33:00.000+02:00

Nao-Team HTWK - Cerberus: 2 - 0!

2010-06-22T12:18:00.004+02:00

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

Video update: NimbRo - First half

2010-06-22T11:24:00.000+02:00

Prizes, prizes, prizes, ....

2010-06-22T11:03:00.000+02:00

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!

2010-06-22T08:40:00.001+02:00

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!

2010-06-22T08:27:00.000+02:00

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...

2010-06-21T16:56:00.000+02:00

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

Impressions from Monday

2010-06-21T16:51:00.003+02:00

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

2010-06-21T15:29:00.001+02:00

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

Hey, why is that human picking me up again?

2010-06-21T12:41:00.005+02:00

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

2010-06-21T11:04:00.000+02:00

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

2010-06-21T08:42:00.000+02:00

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

2010-06-21T06:55:00.003+02:00

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

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

2010-06-21T05:44:00.000+02:00

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

2010-06-21T04:01:00.000+02:00

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.