On Tuesday the @Home team arrives in Magdeburg for the German Open 2017. The @Home competition of the German Open resembles the competition of the world championships and is therefore great preparation for Japan. Just like during the world championships, the competition is based on challenges. The teams must all attempt various challenges to obtain as many points as possible. A description of all challenges can be found here. This year, seven teams are competing in the @Home league, amongst which ToBi, the robot that beat Tech United in the world championships last year where Tech United became second.
The first two days, Wednesday and Thursday, are setup days. During these days, the robots get familiar with the arena and are prepared for all the challenges. Thursday is also the registration day, during this day, the robots have to register themselves and various safety checks are performed. On top of that, the team also holds a poster presentation to show the improvements that have been made over the last year. Then, on Friday and Saturday, the days are filled with challenges. On both days, four challenges are scheduled. To see how AMIGO performed during these challenges, check out the various videos that have been made during the German Open.
Sunday is the day of the final. The five teams with the highest score go to the finals. Those five teams are Tech United, ToBi, Homer, RT Lions and SSC. During the final every team can show something of their choice, much like the Open Challenge. The jury consists of people from the @Home league and people from the business world, they will judge the presentation. At 12:30 AM the finals get started and Tech United starts in the fourth position, at 1:15 PM. Tech United gives away a great demonstration and presentation that can be viewed here. After the jury has deliberated, the score is given and Tech United has claimed the second place! Tech United received the most points for the final, but it was not enough to overcome the lead of Homer. A great performance by Tech United!
The MSL team arrives at Coimbra on Wednesday evening after a long day of traveling. The Portuguese Open is held in Coimbra and Tech United, along with 6 other teams, is competing for the first place in the Middle Size League. The Portuguese Open is great practice for the world championships in Japan, so the team is working hard to fix all bugs and add new features so they can be tested before the world championships. Tech Uniteds’ biggest rival in this competition is CAMBADA, Tech United and CAMBADA faced each other in the final of the Portuguese Open 2016 and CAMBADA won. However, in the world championships 2016 in Leipzig Tech United became world champion and thereby beat CAMBADA. So that promises some great matches during this competition!
In the first two competition days, Friday and Saturday, all teams play against each other. Then, based on the result of these matches, the semi-finals and finals are played on Sunday. Of the six matches Tech United plays during the first two competition days, two are cancelled due to technical problems of the opposite teams. Of the remaining four matches, Tech United wins three. The match versus CAMBADA is an exciting one and ends in a tie! All matched that are played are summarized in the form of a video, and you can watch them using this link. On Sunday the semi-final is played versus the ASML Falcons, which ended in a baffling 11 – 0 for Tech United! This means we are facing CAMBADA in the final, and we’re ready to beat their asses!
At 13:00 the final against CAMBADA starts, and within one minute Tech United scores! But the team knows better than to bust out the melted butter early. But then, within three minutes of the first goal, Tech United scores once more! CAMBADA’s offense play is incredible, but luckily so is our keeper! After a long period of fast heartbeats, sweaty palms and nervous looks the match comes to an end with an amazing score of 2 – 0 for Tech United. We have thereby won the MSL competition of the Portuguese Open 2017.
The football robots won the final against Water and thereby claimed the world title!! This thrilling final ended with an equal score and during the extra time both team scored once. Which means we needed penalties! Our keeper stopped all five penalties so when we sored the first penatly, we knew we earned the world title!
@Home perfomed an excellent final, but they received too little points to compensate for the small gap between them and the first place holder, Tobi. So they are second in the @Home league!! A very impressive outcome!
The first matchday of RoboCup 2016 is over. It was a successful day for both teams. For the care robots, three challenges were scheduled. SERGIO had to navigate and avoid obstacles and during the Speech Recognition Challenge he had to answer a lot of questions. Answering the questions went very well but he had some troubles with navigating to the right person. AMIGO also did a challenge today. During the Person Recognition Challenge he was presented to a person after which the person positioned himself into the crowd. It was the task of AMIGO to find that person and provide some background informations, i.e. male/female or age.
The football robots have also played their first matches. The first match against our German friends from Carpe Noctem ended in a 11-0 victory. Also the matches against the ASML Falcons and the Japanese team Hibikino-Musashi ended in a victory of our robots. During the first day we scored 32 times and our keeper Hans van Sleutelen kept his goal clean; 0 goals against. A great start of the soccer robots!
The website for this spectacular robot event is online! The RoboCup European Open 2016 will take place from 30 March till 3 April in the Evoluon in Eindhoven, the Netherlands. On 30 March, doors will be open for visitors. Participants from countries all over the world will battle against eachother in different robot competitions. The RoboCup Soccer league includes the Small Size League, Middle Size League, and the Standard Platform League. The robotteams from these leagues are playing soccer at different levels. Besides the soccer competitions, there is also the @Home League. The service robots will do task in a household environment, such as serving a drink, cleaning or saving people in an emergency. All these major leagues are mostly participated by university teams and researchers. There are also leagues for younger people, focused on children till 17 years old. Children can participate with their dance, soccer or rescue robots. You can find everything about the tournament on www.robocupeuropeanopen.org.
Unfortunately no title on day of finals at RoboCup 2015
The last day of RoboCup 2015 was all about the big finals. Both the soccer robots as the service robots can become world champion today. This would be a fantastic reward for all the hard work of the team.
The soccer robots will start with their semi-final against ARES from China. They play with the old robots of Water and also there style of play is similar. Earlier in the tournament we played a 5-5 draw against this team so it will be a tough match. Our robots have a good start and they take the lead early in the match. This lead is not been given away and after 30 minutes there is 4-2 score on the scorebord in advance for Tech United. After this match the team prepares the robots for the match we've all been waiting for. The final against our all-time rival Water. Unfortunately the match starts very bad for us and after only 90 seconds the Chinese team already leads with 2-0. After a while they score their third goal and just before half-time we manage to score our first goal of the match. Half time score; 3-1. The second half is very nerve-wrecking and team Water is very efficient in their play and their defence is strong. Eventually Water was found too strong. End score; 4-1. The disappointment is large but Water was the worthy winner.
The final of AMIGO and SERGIO is also a thing that didn't go as planned. Before the final challenge the team expected that with a good performance they would definiately have a chance to take the world title. Tech United starts the challenge on a third position. At the start of the challenge there is an error with the Kinect of SERGIO. The restarts consumes a lot of time and only a few minutes are left for the challenge. The remaining time seemed too short to impress the judges. "This was the best prepared, and worst performed demonstration ever", according to team member Sjoerd van den Dries. The German team Homer performs a solid service robot-demo and grabs the title. Eventually, AMIGO and SERGIO end on a disappointing fourth place.
So, a week of hard work wasn't rewarded with the desired results. Nevertheless we are proud of what we reached with our group. The renewed livestream during the final was a big success. Also our twitter channel was booming during the final. NOS, RTL, Omroep Brabant, Metro, VI, Ministry of Education, Culture and Science, NU.nl, Tweakers and all big radiostations in the Netherlands have paid attention to the result in China. Both teams are heading for their next tournament, RoboCup Dutch Open in 2016!
On the fifth day of RoboCup 2015 it's all about reaching the finals of tomorrow. AMIGO and SERGIO must finish in the top five to reach the final and the soccer robots must become first or second in their poule to receive a ticket to the semi-final.
The soccer robots start the day with a match agains CS_Rob. Unfortunately, this Chinese opponent must stop the match after 7 minutes due to technical problems. Final score; 7-0. The second opponent is MRL from Iran. This was always a tough opponent in previous years but this year they are not able to make a fist. After 30 minutes the score is 8-0 for Tech United. The last opponent of today is Robit. This can not be considered as a tough hurdle because we manage to score 17 times during the match; 17-0. The highlights of these matches can be seen here te bekijken.
AMIGO and SERGIO start their day with the Wake Me Up Challenge. In this challenge, AMIGO has to wake someone up, give him the newspaper and bring a nice breakfast. Unfortunately he drops the box of cereal before he reaches the table but his performance is not bad. This is followed by the RoboNurse, this is a bit more difficult for AMIGO. Several things don't go as they should be going. This is followed by the Restaurant Challenge. This challenge was tested very well at the TU/e but during the challenge there were some problems with speech recognition. Just before time runs out, SERGIO begins his tasks but there is too little time to score much points. The service robots will start the final on a third position and need to get 100 points more than WrightEagle to take the world title.
Tomorrow is D-day for both teams. The soccer robots will have to beat ARES in the semi-final before team Water waits in the final. AMIGO and SERGIO will have to get 100 points more than the number one to have a chance to take the title. Curious about the highlights of stage 1 in the @Home-league? Check the video.
Techunited Vandaag geeft Tech United demonstraties tijdens het Make Tech Event in Roermond! Heb jij ze al gezien? pic.twitter.com/pgfigPIlGO
Techunited Voor de mensen die niet bekend zijn met het campusterrein hebben we er een speurtocht van gemaakt met bewegwijzinge… twitter.com/i/web/status/8…
