World Cup 2008, Suzhou, China

Sunday, 20.07.

Final day

Today we were all enjoying the fact that we did not have to care for our system nor our robots. We were just having a good time, watching the last games and meeting other people.

This years final was a remake of last years final: PlasmaZ had qualified in semi final as well as CMDragons. It was a very tough, fast and thrilling game which ended with 4:2 for PlasmaZ. Thus the new world champions come from Thailand.
We have now packed all our belongings and are well prepared for the travel home. Tomorrow we will go to Shanghai, where the plane starts on Tuesday. Some od us will stay in Shanghai a few days longer until the adventurous trip to china will be finished. We thank you as our readers for your concern, igus® for their support and the chinese for the warm welcome. Although before the Robocup some things were a bit confused, the event was very well prepared and anxious to fullfill all needs of the participants. I hope you read us again.

--
Ulfert

Saturday, 19.07.

A long and hard week ends

To cut a long story short: We won the game against MRL today with 9:0, but lost the quarter final against PlasmaZ just as clearly. After this tough week our Hardware did not manage to keep on meeting all requirements, what forced us to play with only 4 robots in between. Only 3 of those were able to shoot, but that is not supposed to be an excuse - even with five of our robots fully capable of everything they usually can do it would be a very hard match for us. We could have looked better, but to loose against last years runner-up (and my favorite for tomorrows final games) is no shame.

After the quarter final, when we had finished packing the first suitcases, we entered the so called "social event", which takes place every year and in this case was a big Diner Buffet. In my opinion the ambience was nicer than the food, but luckily tasts are different. After returning to the hotel afterwards we arranged our own social event with other robocuppers, but without junior league jids around we could taste the local beers. The first evening without stress was welcomed by everyone.

Tomorrow we are not free of duties, we are set as referees. We will first referee a semi final and later on maybe even the final itsself. Between those games we will propably join the finals in other leagues, keep on packing our stuff and enjoy the vibes. Stress is cooling down and we are looking forward to going home.

--
Ulfert

Friday, 18.07.

do'h

We have been waiting for a week for this last decisive game, well prepared and focussing all our energy to the group to achieve victory.The game against ZjunLict was under a lucky star and promised to be very exciting: Both teams were tied with 9 points in the table top, after we had won the game against Botnia 10:0 in the morning. The test matches in two days earlier were all even, however with a slight tendency for ZjunLict. The Chinese were eventually favorites in the running for number 1 of the group.

What happened, however, can still none of us really understand: Our image processing, which had worked 10 minutes before the game was started (and 5 minutes after the game ended) as perfect as the 3 days before, began with the start of the game to make some problems. The color detection functioned just blew up. Own robots were confused, the ball jumped unusually strong and opponents were not recognized properly at all. The result was that our robots were extremely inaccurate, missed the ball very often, shot only insufficiently precisely and were simply not fast enough where they were needed. Of course, Sven tried in several timeouts to find the mistake in the system , but was not able to solve the anomalies. The success of his effort was very modest, unfortunately, so that the identification was hardly improved. The game result was no surprise: 4:0 we were back to the midterm, with our timeouts already exhausted.

With the beginning of the second half, as our agent (which controls the behavior) could not send any signals anymore and our robot crashed into the surrounding wall we only could give up with the stand from 5:0 against us. There was no alternative for us at this time. Without the image-recognition and, at that moment, without a running system we would have had no chance anyway, and the robots crashing into the wall would have let to engine damage. Without a restart from the system, which is only allowed in the timeouts (and there was no timeout left for us), we were not able to solve the issue.

So far nobody has an explanation for this error yet. The allegations range from reflections by the spectators high above the normal range (which was not there before the game starts and after the game and therefore fits into the profile) up to cameras, which might a special hire on their wavelength of light which might have destroyed or disturb our color detection.

We have not managed to reproduce the error yet, so the search to detect the cause is very difficult. Tomorrow we will see whether the vision is back to normal function - we hope it all. We entered the relegation as 2nd in our group, so we will play at first agains the 3rd from the Group C (the iranian team MRL has qualified there), the winner of this match will play against the first from the Group C. PlasmaZ, beeing the VizeChampion from last years championship, waits in quarter final as a very strong opponent. We try to get to the quarter final first, though.

Today, as in the past few days, we could see a little trend: We are playing really good, but we have our ´blackouts´, considering the game against ZjunLict today an the challenges yesterday and on wednesday. It is normally then that our mood went down a lot by this, but we actually can be very proud of what we achieved. We have won 3 from 4 games so far and we demonstrated that we are on a high level (even if it was only in testing games). We are confident to qualify for quarter final tomorrow, and that would be a big success. We can be proud of what we have achieved, but going to the quarters this would manifest that we might belong to the 8 best teams in the world.

--
Ulfert

Thursday, 17.07.

Hard work

Today we all had a bunch full of work to to. Without a break we repaired the robots, fixed bugs, prepared the robots, tested the robots and the software, played games and refereed other games. We won our second game with 8:0, what was not a 10:0 only because the opponent team took every second they could get to delay the normal playing. The referee was not willing to do anything about that, so we have to deal with it. We do not know yet if that might be of any interest after all, but the constellation of the group offers room for speclations.

Although we took part in todays challenge our score was not to mention. After the desaster yesterday we decided not to spend any time on the second challenge. We took part after all - maybe this olympic motto speaks for itself.

Today I skip this entry a bit earlier than before, what is because I have to be awake again in about 3 hours. It is now 2:36h and I need some rest, maybe you as my readers understand and tolerate that :)

--
Ulfert

Wednesday, 16.07.

Success and failure...

...are often very close to each other. Our first game we won with 10:0 in the first half. It even could have been faster as the RoboJackets where not able to move, but our robots had to warm up a bit. Agter the first period one goal followed the other.

Later we agreed with ZjunLict for another testing game which they welcomed as warmly as we did. You rarely have the possibility to test against an opponent which is nearly as good as you are. This game again was set for one half (15min), we lost 2:1. We offer much less space for the chinese robots and are after all satisfied with the progress we made.

In the evening the first challenge took place. Thanks to our ignorance towards a very ugly behaviour of Windows concerning the network device we were not able to start our system in time. Even with Linux (what we are using) we were not able to fix the problem, and booting Windows and Linux after that again just took too much time. We missed the chance to win some extra credits, what is very sad especially for Andy who had prepared the challenge.

While I have gone home now for writing this and to sleep a bit more than the 4 hours yesterday, my teammates are still in the Hall to fix the broken hardware and to delete some bugs. After what has happend tonight we are all down and not in the mood to celebrate, although we startet so successfully in this tournament.

--
Ulfert

Tuesday, 15.07.

and they drive on and on and on...

To anticipate it: My shirt actually is too small. It's not belly bearing, but I'm feeling quite uncomfortable wearing it. On the journey home I combined it with a similar tight, green shirt with long sleeves. That probably looked strange und was really warm, but it also was green-white and therefore good on principle. Sebastian was wearing his 2004 champion shirt and we were expeditiously identified as being from Bremen in the shuttle bus. Not only "for a lifetime", but world-wide green-white.

But beside our clothing, there were important things, too: Some changes on our hardware became necessary after we had a go on the new kicker eventually. It wasn't a great problem though. Some additional adjustments related to the communication, the behaviour, hardware and the (pixel accurate) configuration of the image processing took some time. Our robots are waiting for their mission in stoic resignation. But when it's up to them, they're agile and energetic. In fact, they've got some difficulties with the deep grass and high lines, and they hobble a bit, but this is a general problem for all teams and we can't change it. The only robots that could possibly handle it can be found in the Rescue League, but they're a bit larger, too.

After we ate out in a chinese restaurant (probably it never was so unusual to tip), we organized a testing game against ZjuNLict from china. The team is head of our group and reached rank four at Robocup world championchip Atlanta last year. We played one half and lost 3:1, which isn't tragic - not only for it was just a test game, but also because it was our first game against an international established and really good opponent since the German Open 2007 finals. We saw vacancies in our play and will work on it now. Our playing schedule is available on our website www.b-smart.de, by the way. There can be found continuative information on our team, too.

We'll try to link videos of several games there (including our own) when we edited them, but the connection quality to Germany is mostly really bad, so this will take some time. Thanks to Sven at this point, who's doing the editing.
--
Ulfert

Homepage Team B-Smart
Schedule and videos

Test game

 
 

Monday, 14.07.

Organisation is a chinese talent, too..

You can never be sure of why something works out in this country. On one hand there is the massive amount on manpower available - whenever something has to be done multiple chinese people emerge out of nowhere and start working on it without ever complaining. On the other hand, there are those smart guys who make up their great ideas how something will work. In our case it must have been the second case: We actually got a badge with the right name and the right foto, although those information had not been stored together.

After beeing quite confident in the morning about our setup day our mood was cooled down a lot when facing the fact that for all 21 teams in Small-Size-League on all four fields only one ladder was available. The problem grew when the first teams took hours each for setting up their cameras, so we had to join a long queue of waiting teams. We disported by fixing some minor bugs in the transmission protocoll, testing of the carpet, testing of the lines, lifting the shovels of the chipkick and doing some other minor hardware repairs. Some new behaviours are also prepared for the technical challenges. We are planning to compete in those challenges as well and are trying our best (as usual). Then suddenly some chinese workers appeared to slim down the lines to a manageable height (see above) and our concerns shrinked.

When it was our turn to take the ladder we where finished rapidly - we are in good shape and used to setting up the system. Anyway, it was not possible to drive with the robots on the field as it was too crowded. Testing has to be done tomorrow when all teams have finished their setup. Read us again tomorrow to experience if and how our robots are driving and what else happens in Suzhou, China :)

--
Ulfert

Sunday, 13.07.

B-Smart first on the ground

 
Luggage, spare time and registration

Today two enjoyable things happend: First our two missed suitcases arrived, what completed our luggage. We only had sporadic losts: Our bottle with compressed air was removed from those suitcases as well as any type of glue we had taken with us. The Federal Border Guard propably took them out because of the much lower air pressure in 11Km height where our airplane was about to fly. We will have to find compensation or we will borrow us needed stuff from other participants.

The noontime we spend in Sushou downtown because registration started in the evening. We took the time to act like real tourists and jumped in the turbulence of chinese cities, shouldered our backpacks and took a thrilling bus drive. As we are complete analphabets in this country and english is not understood, we had to trust our luck and our pocket guide to find back to the hotel. To tell you the truth it is the first time we are not busy with last-minute-bugfixes, last-minute-hardware-repairs or other urgent stuff so close before a competition. We still have things to do, but that is what we have to do on the field: Care about the carpet, care about the thick lines and adjust the traction control system. We propably have to fix some parts to work with the new carpet like the chipkick-shovel, but that is an issue of tomorrow.

Downtown it mainly was hot, that is the biggest feature to mention. After leaving the cooled bus we nearly fell over backwards. The closeness and the tang was extremely exhausting, we managed to make a shopping tour anyway. The task to buy a pair of short trousers went out to be not even challenging but also very interesting for me as well as for the three chinese girls who tried to help me out with choosing the size. There seem to be different standards for clothes so they had to find something in XXXL. Actually I'm not THAT big... -.-

The registration took part in the evening in the foyer of the event hall. We had to show papers for completed payment, invitation letters and other important papers. After that we were photographed - we are all curious about how the chinese will manage to combine our names with the right photo. If they do it right we will all get a badge with correct names and photos which we will need to get access to the exibition. After finishing registration, we got an information brochure and a T-shirt. I got a shirt in size L, in Germany I would buy at least size XL. tomorrow I will see if I have to move around with a bare midriff. At the back we are now labelled as "Robocop", hopefully a misspelling and not a task - I do not want to fight against the 1.60m-teen-size robots at all.

Tomorrow we will eventually enter the playground to set up our system. We are confident that everything will work out fine, read us again tomorrow.

--
Ulfert

Saturday, 12.07.

On the road again...

Good morning and a hearty welcome. For the fourth time, B-Smart is reporting on the website of its main sponsor igus® whilst on the go. As of today, we are in the Chinese city of Suzhou – This city will be the venue of the Robocup 2008 (the Robocup World Championship) starting on Monday.

Again, we have had some hard and busy weeks of preparation, and we are looking forward to a competition with an uncertain, but hopefully positive outcome.

Today, we have already overcome the first difficult hurdles, namely our journey to China, with the usual minor hiccups. Prior to travelling we did our best in order to book hotels and flights correctly, to apply for the required visas and all related documents through the so-called "ATA Carnet", and to declare our valuables at customs for free import and export. This very pesky and time-consuming work paid off today, since departure and arrival were free of any complications, and the continuation of the journey from Shanghai to our target destination was successful. Even though (yet again) two suitcases went missing along the way, the friendly and hospitable Chinese really are doing everything they can in order to help us with difficulties that may arise. Hence, this problem will also be solved soon.

Our first impression is really positive. We moved into a first-class hotel with single rooms located within a group suite, we have many caretakers who support us as interpreters and guides in case of possible problems or challenges. And last but not least the weather is very good, even though it is very warm.

Up to now we do not know when we can enter the hall where the competition is taking place. We will however be informed tomorrow through the course of the afternoon or on Monday. Of course we will publish all news and details on this website as soon as we know about them. Now, however, we go to bed and try to get rid of our jet lag. :)

--
Ulfert