The third day of the World Cup arrived, the day before the finals. This day determined which teams will make it into these finals. MSL had a few difficulties during the day, but managed to end with a great semi-final! For @Home it was a very close battle. Three teams were fighting for a place in the finals. Read how it went below!

Want to have some further insight in all the RoboCup crazyness? Our social media reporter Feline took a look around the venue at interviewed our team members. Watch the video here!

MSL
For MSL, the last round robin was played today. This round determined which teams will make it to the semi finals. The soccer robots did not loose any match until today, a track record to keep.

However, the games in the morning were not as smooth as yesterday. Quite a lot of small issues and bugs occured in the software. For example, losing the ball, not allowing a throw-in by the opponent team, passes that were being missed and a disfunctional goal detection system. After a meeting with the whole team, priorities were determined and all the issues that needed to be worked on were discussed. We directly got to work and together we were able to make progress and identify why things did not work out as intended. In the afternoon only two matches were left to test the improvements before the semi-final needed to be played in the evening. View the summary here.

@Home

For @Home, the challenges done today are the restaurant challenge and the party host challenge. These challenges are the final two of the second stage of the tournaments. These rounds are crucial for getting to the final. 

First up was the restaurant challenge. This challenge is always a difficult one since HERO has to navigate in a completely new environment and has to talk with people in the restaurant. Since the start of the team 10 years ago it never went completely successful, until today. We nailed it! In the afternoon it was time for the party host challenge. In this round we did two challenges: one where HERO had to guide a guest towards a requested piece of furniture and one where HERO had to recognize where a person was pointing to. The first went flawless and in the second challenge we also scored some points. The wait for the results was nerve-racking, because three teams were very close to each other. But our succesful day managed to get us to the first place! On to the finals! Watch the recap of day here!

Scientific challenge

Today, MSL presented the Scientific Challenge. Team member Jaap explained about a new development of the strategy, more specifically, about making the strategy more explainable. This was done with the use of a visualization where playable parts on the field are represented, narrowing down the strategic decision. Tomorrow the points will be announced.

MSL semi-final

In the semi-final we faced ERSOW. We won securely and it gave us the chance to test the last parts of the code that we want to use tomorrow. This evening we still need to work on the last changes and improvements, but we are confident to offer a good gameplay. Looking forward to the finals! 

Tomorrow

Tomorrow is the day of the finals. MSL will play the finals for the World Championship to defend our title. If the team would win the coming finals, we will be 6th time World Champions. For MSL the finals will start at 11:30 local time, 6:30 Dutch time. The finals can be followed via our livestream, which can be found by clicking this link.
@Home plays its final against TidyBoy, a very strong team from Korea. The teams can come up with their own challenge and will get points for complexity, creativity and performance. The finals will start at 12:00 local time, 7:00 Dutch time.