Thursday 23 November 2017

End of Day 1

Nao-Devils Dortmund took the lead by defeating us 2:1. Despite the close result they were the stronger team this time and deserved the win. Earlier today, we won 2:0 over Berlin United.
Overall we still look good and will meet Bembelbots next tomorrow. If we win this we're up for a rematch against Dortmund in the finals.


HTWK 5:0 NomadZ

We opened the tournament with a 5:0 victory over NomadZ. Just before the match started we experienced some new issues, but were able to fix those fast enough.
Due to a tight schedule the games only last 10 minutes, which is needed to give the robots enough time to rest in between.
We're scheduled to play against Berlin United next at 2pm.

Wednesday 22 November 2017

Phoenix Contact Robotics Cup

We are in Cologne/Köln at the Absolventenkongress until Friday for a small tournament featuring a total of 5 teams from Germany and Switzerland.
The first match will be played tomorrow 12 pm between us and NomadZ from Zürich.

It's nice to have a competition again and see many familiar faces. Our main task will be to tune the walking engine for the local field. We'll keep you updated about the progress and results.



Friday 20 October 2017

Nacht der offenen Tür zur IHK Leipzig

Yesterday we participated at the "Nacht der offenen Tür" by an invitation of the IHK Leipzig. We want to thank them very much for the well done organization and support on the day. We presented our Nao's in videos from the past competitions and in action. The visitors were able to control the robots by its own. The IHK Team made a video (in german) where our team member Hannes presented the RobotSoccer as »The Future«.




Thursday 28 September 2017

Krone E-Mobility Play Days

We are on our way to Austria for the Krone E-Mobility Play Days. There we will meet our good friends - the Bembelbots - and play some showmatches. If you're in the area make sure to visit the event, as it appears to be quite big and interesting. Also we are there, so it will be great!

Tuesday 8 August 2017

Watch the World Championship Finals now

This year's Robocup SPL League finals were a close match between the team B-Human and us. We hope you'll find our recording of the game as exciting as the crowd did at the edges of the field.

Sunday 30 July 2017

After the finals

Look how good the chemistry is between the teams. We are sad for them because they only won closely and they are happy for us because we almost were victorious.



Finals - HTWK 1:2 B-Human

We lost the finals 1:2 in an insanely intense match. B-Human started without hesitation and scored a goal after just 36 seconds. Our goalie saw it coming, but the shot distance was too short and so he used his motion too late.
We were shocked and thought the game would take the usual course. Instead we managed to bring the ball into a good position a few times, but unfortunately fell short.
The 2nd half looked promising, as we took the ball close to their goal with 2 robots. It took a bad turn however, when the striker was penalized for pushing, while the 2nd attacker started to walk back a bit. Without the penalty he would likely have scored. B-Human took the ball and increased their lead with a flawless attack.
We still weren't out and mounted another attack, this time successfully. With 70 seconds on the clock, we almost equalized the score. It came down to a showdown between our striker and their goalkeeper. Their keeper succeeded and prevented a penalty-shootout from happening.

We are still happy with the result, as we played a lot better than expected against a team that had an otherwise flawless tournament without a single goal scored against them.






Semi Finals - HTWK 8:1 UT Austin Villa

We made it to the finals!!!!
After narrowly missing out for 2 years in a row we are back to challenge B-Human for 1st place. Almost everything went perfectly, we had possession of the ball most of the time and Austins defense wasn't prepared to deal with our dribbling.
What also helped was that their whistle detection gave false signals 3 times during the 1st half, which gave us a huge advantage after kickoff. They fixed this in the break, but for us everything still went according to plan and we increased our lead. For 30 seconds we even saw the return of our attacking goalie who regained his free will and tried to score on his own.









Saturday 29 July 2017

Quarter Finals - HTWK 2:0 TJark

We couldn't be more happy as we made it to the semi finals for the 6th time in a row with an exciting 2:0 victory over TJark. The game went back and forth with 2 very different approaches to the game. They didn't dribble at all and instead used short distance kicks until they were close enough to go for a final shot.


In the 1st half we were on offense most of the time and took the lead after about 6 minutes in. After the break the game got really intense. Our robots were falling nonstop for a while. What saved us was always having 2-3 players near the ball. At one point TJark were close enough to score a goal and our goalie wasn't looking at the ball for a moment, which is quite rare. Lucky for us, the attacker kicked the rug. Soon after we took possession of the ball and managed to score again.
With 3 minutes left on the clock TJark mounted another attack and forced our goalkeeper into action. This time however, he was prepared, had vision on the ball all the time and jumped at the perfect time. Our robots stalled the game afterwards to let us advance to the semis.

Many thanks to the Bembelbots for lending us a body. Fused with our Mr. Burns to Mr. Bembel-Burns he was an essential part of the offence. We wish them good luck in their quarter-finals.

Tomorrow we'll get our rematch from last year's semi-finals. We expect another close game, so wish us luck!

HTWK 6:0 RoboCanes

We defeated RoboCanes from Miami 6:0. This was our best match of the tournament so far due to some much needed improvements. The strategy was again to score goals by dribbling. In previous games we ran into our opponents too often, which isn't the case anymore. We are very happy with this result are confident for our quarter finals match in 3 hours, where we will face either TJark or WrightOcean.





Robot Funeral

We have to announce sad news: Megamind is dead. Moments ago he was buried in his favorite jersey surrounded by his teammates.
Nevertheless, the show must go on and our remaining robots dealt with their grief by playing another match of soccer

Friday 28 July 2017

Heading home

We are done for today. It was an awesome day and we had a lot fun. We hope you had fun too and we will be back tomorrow.

Competition Day 2

We are done for the day and sit together in a hotel room with some delicous Sake (rice wine). We had one match which we won 4:1 against MRL despite some hardware issues.

For tomorrow we plan to prepare some strategies which prevents our opponents from ever seeing the ball. Stay tuned and wish us luck!



SPL League Photo

These are the people of the Standard Platform League  :-D


Live streaming and official videos

There is live streaming and a collection of official videos.

You can find the streaming schedule here. The live streaming will be via Youtube and the collection of all videos will be available here. We will also upload new videos soon. So have fun watching robots play soccer :-D






Thursday 27 July 2017

End of the first competition day

The first competition day is over and we really felt the intensity of the games. The first day always includes teething problems you never could have imagined. We had the chance to see all the new stuff in action and smoothed out the rough edges.


Taskforce Mode

We saw some strange behavior when playing the last two matches. Robots are switching off at random and we couldn't explain why. So we collected all the robots that were ready to play and created a robot task force. After a few hours we found the error and moved on to the next :-)


HTWK 3:1 HULKs

We managed to beat the HULKs from Hamburg 3:1 and take 1st place in the groupstage. The HULKs put up a good fight with strong defensive behavior and a flawless attack which resulted in their goal. Our goalkeeper saw their shot coming, but couldn't reach the ball in time.
There will be another round robin which starts tomorrow. Our only match of the day will be at 14:30 local time (07:30 CEST).

We are quite happy with the results and look forward to improve a lot of stuff in the remaining time.

HTWK 4:0 Berlin United

We won our opening match against Berlin United with 4:0. Despite having some new issues causing robots to crash on occasion we were on the offense most of the time.

Our next match is against HULKs at 12:30 local time (05:30 CEST) and if we win we finish 1st in the group.

Wednesday 26 July 2017

2nd Preparation Day: Penalty Shot Challenge

After a nice performance in the first round of the Panalty Shot Challenge against HULKs, we went against Team B-Human. Although our Gargamel scored an awesome goal we unfotunatly lost due to a failure in the new Penalty Shot Strategy.



Side stories: Lunch opportunities in Japan

Japan offers great lunch opportunities. We tasted lunch boxes yesterday and visited a soup restaurant as well. The taste was amazing. You have to try that if you ever get the chance to do so :-)



Timeschedule for the Competition

The time schedule for the competition is available. You can find it online.

http://spl.robocup.org/robocup-2017-schedule/

We will meet the Berlin United and the HULKs in our first round robin phase.

Second Setup Day

We started our day with a good breakfast and were  with the organization here in Nagoya. Official showing participants the way to the trains and venue. Also we got prepared for the Japan way of public transportation. They marked lines on the ground to show us where to stand. Here are a few images.


We will participate today in the penalty shootout competition which is mandatory. Jörg prepared us well and we are a bit nervous like every year before the first real match.