RoboCup is Happening

RoboCup has been getting seriously hectic, leaving little time to blog about the event. I'll fill you all in in much more detail after the event, but here's a quick summary for now.

As our robots were shipped to our German team members three weeks ago, we only got to see them on Monday for the first time. Yes, it's been a long ride since the expected arrival of April 2008, but at least we can be rest assured we're not the only ones with such issues. Receiving them so late has resulted in a massive on-site rush to get the things just to walk, but we finally got it right this morning at about 2am (kick and such follows easily!)! Today we can put the vision system to the test, which we expect to produce good results. Our behaviour for this year is really simple, as without decent motion there's little point.


The robots have been seriously breaking to pieces all over the show. They did a tally yesterday and out of 60 robots only 25 are in reasonable working condition (we have 2 of 4). The Aldebaran workshop is so bad they wouldn't let me take a photo, but I tell you I would not want to be one of their engineers! They've been very friendly and helpful though as RoboCup is really the only reason they're still developing the robot, which they aim to release to the public next year.


This is one of our German team members Tim Niemueller working on his RoboCup@Home robot. Their robot cost about 60,000 euros to build and that's just the physical components. They have been champions two years now and although they had a problem with their main board they have high hopes to pull through victorious once again and speaking to the other teams this is quite likely.


We hope to enter the Small Size and RoboCup Rescue leagues next year, which is what part of our delegation is here for this year. Here's an example of how the rescue robots look like: