RoboCup 2007

introduction and salutation

Welcome to the Blog dealing with B-Smart's expedition to the RoboCup 2007 in Atlanta. B-Smart, a student's project at the university of Bremen, will try to show what their robots are able to achieve when playing soccer. Against 12 opponents from all over the world this will be a tough job fighting for the conveted trophy of world championship in small size robosoccer.

This year's team consists of our projectmanager Ruben (responsible for organization and image recognition), our administrator Meo (communication and server), Christoph, Armin and Florian (Hardware and improvisation) as well as Andi and Ulfert (behaviour).

Also here in Atlanta for other teams and joining us some times are Tim and Thomas (host of the B-Smart project and members of B-Human), Judy and Martin (members of B-Human) as well as Ubbo (member of Virtual Werder).

More Information about our team, the Small Size League and some links to the other teams from the University of Bremen mentioned above can be found at www.b-smart.de .
The tournament's official website with timetables, teams and even more information is located at www.robocup-us.org .

--
Ulfert

Preparations

On wednesday evening the time had come to start packing our suitcases. With many people and lots of noise we started, but finished with fewer but even busier packers. Having found out what we needed, sorted out what would be disturbing and what could be helpful eventually we tried to balance the weight so we could take all suitcases without paying any extra fee.

One thrilling question remained unanswered: What kind of treatment would we receive at the german and especially the US-American customs? on today's morning we finally took 3 of our suitcases and went off to the customs. As we came there we first were literally laughed at because of our request as we came 5 minutes before closure and had some hard work with us. After a few minutes though, we got our papers signed and now we are prepared to head for the United States tomorrow morning.

--
Ulfert

Arrival in "Adlanna"

Here we are again :)
After a long journey with again a surprisingly short stay at the US-American customs in Minneapolis we landed in Atlanta just to get to know that one of our suitcases was missing. As we got to know after we had presented the officials with a very detailed packing list this last suitcase waited in Minneapolis for it's last journey back into our custody as it had lost it's batch with the destination.

After we stayed the night at the airport where we also made our first experiences with the american "way of life" we finally arrived at our housing at early afternoon. After having our first "american meal" we now are very tired as well as happy to be here and will go to bed soon. Tomorrow will be Set Up Day after which we hopefully can tell some stories of success.

--
Ulfert

Setup and testing

Today we had the opportunity to enter the competition hall at 12 pm which is about to be our "home" for the next 10 days. The Campus Recreation Center of the GA Tech actually is a sports hall in the size of about 2 basketball fields. In this area all leagues except for the simulation and aibo league are lodged.

After finding the right field to play on and defining the borders of our team area we set up our system without any problems. To our great joy all robots worked fine after the long journey.

Beneath the current world champion, the CMDragons, also Botnia from Finland is in our group. Like in Hannover, it was fun to meet other teams and discuss problems and exchange experiences. We are looking forward to the testing games that will hopefully take place tomorrow.

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Markus

In the evening the power of the entire hall was switched off in order to install some new power supply and maybe even some fuses. We can not understand why fuses are not standard preparations for such a big event as robocup is.

As one team still tried to qualify for robocup we only had a small amount of time to for testing our robots. The rest of the time was used to plan what we will have to to until sunday to achieve the best-possible result for all our team. A tough week is laying ahead of us all.

--
Ulfert

First games

Finally the day for our first games had arrived and we had to start on first place against the White Eagles. Before the game when we saw our opponents we were very optimistic but the good start was vanished by some massive problems in our wireless communication (we are using WLAN). Our robots drove strangely disordered as they received the signals from our server 20 seconds(!) after they should have. The reason for that was a massive interference on our frequency by various bluetooth devices and open WLANs. With this massive delay the game was lost instantly as our opponents in the game scored one goal after the other. The second game on that day we gave up before the end as our robots started to crash into each other (as a consequence of the delay) and we wanted to prevent harm from our hardware. Hopefully the radiometrix devices we brought can be set up until tomorrow so we can use instead of WLAN.

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Meo

Life in subjunctive

It feels a bit like fighting against windmills sitting on a donkey: Every time one problem is solved another one appears preventing our robots from driving. The radiometrix modules have been set up over night so that the robots were able to send and receive signals even with a very small delay.
As it appeared that bringing them to work was only the tip of the iceberg of our problems. After this big step forward several problems emerged, first it was only possible to control a single robot at a time, than the robots just got too many commands so they were not able to find out the good ones. After the solution of one problem the next appeared to be even bigger, thats no fun at all.
Certainly it does not help us in our situation, but it has to be stated that the reservation of the WLAN frequency for our league is stated in the official robocup rules and that the host as well as some teams in other leagues did not follow them. We have lost the tournament because of the presented incorrect planning and we were not able to show what we tought our robots.

Needless to say that we want to finish the tournament as good as possible and so we are working very hard to get our radiometrix modules to running. As we are only 5 teams in our group and the best 4 will proceed into the quater finals a victory against Botnia might even give us that chance. In the situation in which we are at the moment and under the terms that we found that would be a great success for our team.

At this point we are also already planning for the events to come what we have to do better the next times. We have all made great experiences at our first robocup so hopefully we will be able to transform them to much better preparations next year when robocup will be helt in China.

--
Ulfert

Quaterfinal

A feeling of success was necessary and finally reached. The match against Botnia was played with our old radio system and ended after the probably most nerve-wracking game of the preliminary round to our advantage with a final score of 3:0. Indeed we are not happy about the eleminition of our frieds from finland, but we are happy having officially reached the quarter finals.
Due to the experience we made implementing the alternative radio system, we were able to spend the rest of the day on improvements of our existing communication devices.

A stunning final

A more thrilling game would not have been possible. The match between Plasma-Z from Thailand and the CMDragons from the USA was best quality Small Size robosoccer. After an exciting first half the games' result seemed to be forseeable. The agile CMDragons let no doubt on their brilliant gameplay and went with a 3:1 into the half time. This supposable final score became clearer as they advaced to a 5:1 in the first minutes of the second half.

But they were thwarted by the agressively driving thais. Till the end of the second half they hauled out a 4:5 and scored 10 seconds before the end to a sensational 5:5. Therewith an absolutely amazing match was crowned by an unprecedented incident - the overtime. As the gap between two teams normally guarantees a clear result after the second half there was nothing in the rules about overtime. This was dynamically added by our soccer enthused referee in accordance with both teams and unfortunately left only more desperation. Now the score was 6:6 and the air over the playground electrified by stress. Ulfert decided as chief referee for a penalty shootout and forced a decision for the benefit of the CMDragons. This game will make Small Size League history.

After the finals of all the other leagues and the awards ceremony ended it was finally time to say goodbye. We withdrawed to the housing area to spend our last days in america on scientific lectures, sunlight and above all silence till we finally leave on wednesday.

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Ruben

The Return

At last we are all home again, but not as straightforward as we would have wished. At Bremen's airport actually 5 out of 11 suitcases were missing. As Bremen is small enough to go home in between we visited the airport 3 more times on thursday until we had all our luggage completed. After we arrived at our homes at around 7pm this long journey had finally come to an end.

At yesterday's first plenum with the reunited crew we were already planning how to learn from our experiences in Atlanta for the next events to come. The motivated spirit led us to several ideas and appendages we will try to cover until the next German Open in next year's spring.

At the end of this Blog I would like to thank IGUS in our whole team's name for the the support we were provided with. Without that we probably would not even have been able to compete in Atlanta. Next year, when the RoboCup is helt in China, we all hope we can show what we and our Robots are really able to show. We would be very happy to aproach the upcoming changes and advancements together with our partner IGUS who always believed in us.

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Ulfert