Sunday 10 July 2011

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

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

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

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:

Saturday 9 July 2011

Impressions from today ...

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!!!

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!

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!

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

First Half:


Second Half:

Nao-Team HTWK : WrightEagleUnleashed - 3 : 0!

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:

Friday 8 July 2011

Impressions of day 3

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!

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

A live stream from the RoboCup is also available here:

We're in TV ;-)

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!

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!

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! :-)

Thursday 7 July 2011

Day 2 nearly over ...

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!

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!

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

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! :-)

Wednesday 6 July 2011

TĂ¼rkiye'ye HoÅŸgeldiniz!

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

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.


Tuesday 5 July 2011

Day 1: The Setup

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!

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



Monday 4 July 2011

Arriving at the airport

We checked in our luggage and wait to board our plane. Our other team mates do the same in ZĂ¼rich and Belfast.

Sunday 3 July 2011

We are heading towards Berlin

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

Saturday 16 April 2011

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

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

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

Nao-Team HTWK vs. Bembelbots

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









Friday 8 April 2011

Nao-Team HTWK vs. Noxious

Nao-Team HTWK vs. Noxious

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



Thursday 7 April 2011

Nao-Team HTWK VS. RFC. St.Ellingen

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

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

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

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.

Monday 4 April 2011

Back at the HTWK Leipzig

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

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!

Sunday 3 April 2011

Party Time!

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!

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

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

'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.

Saturday 2 April 2011

Are you lost?

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.