This is my attempt to use HTML tables. Not the prettiest in the world.
Aibo results
| Opponent | Final score |
|---|---|
| Cerberus | 6-0 |
| TJ Ark | 3-0 |
| sharPKUngfu | 9-0 |
| UT Austin Villa | 4-2 |
| TecRams | 10-0 |
| GermanTeam | 0-2 in penalty kicks |
| UT Austin Villa | 3-1 |
See the whole Aibo League’s results here
The Nao results can be found here
My battery is about to die but figured someone might want to see a picture from China
On the bus to Suzhou from the Shanghai airport, Jack and I started writing what is the fastest behavior ever written – it was created today (Sunday) and will play soccer by Wednesday (knock on wood). Even in 2006, our behavioral code was started at least 2 weeks before competition. It will certainly be an adventure!
Our trip to get here went about as smooth as can be expected. No one got any sleep before our 3:00am meet up time in the Lab, and the 45-min taxi ride in a Lincoln Navigator turned out not be as cramped as we expected, considering the enormous size of our robot cases.
In Portland, Jack and I managed to get away with paying only 80 dollars apiece for our overweight and oversize luggage that could have cost us upto $300 per leg. What a steal! (Mike and Todd had to pay $360, and they’re luggage didn’t even make it to Shanghai on the right flight!) Our 1hr layover in Atlanta turned out to be plently long enough to make it from C55 (where our flight arrived) all the way to the E concourse to catch our 777 to shanghai. Bowdoin RoboCup represented in row 50, while the rest of the plane was pretty empty. The 15hr flight turned out to be just as long as you’d expect a 15 hour flight to be – long enough to take several hour long naps, watch a movie or two, and read some of my book, and still have time to watch the plane inch slowly across the map view in the headrest in front of me.
Once we got to Shanghai, I tried to take money from an ATM, but it said my Bank refused the payment. Instead I found a pretty decent exchange rate right next to the luggage pickup where you pay a flat 59 RMB commission on the exchange – the rate was something like 6.75 RMB/dollar. Once we got our luggage, we were met by some local volunteers who helped us sort out our ATA Carnet, and get through customs. Mainly we had to wait a long time for them to process CMUs Carnet – they never even looked through our luggage, and approved our paperwork quickly. As should be expected with technology, neither of the two cellphones I brought worked when I turned them on. The Bowdoin one refused to acquire any service – maybe it doesn’t work on the 900Mhz band? The other one I managed to borrow from Dave probably needs to get some minutes charged into it – it says Emergency Use Only – at least it gets service!
Exiting from Customs in Terminal 1, we met the rest of the group, who had already been informed by another volunteer that we had another team member waiting in Terminal 2. One of them even helped guide us to the other terminal, which was a relief. In Terminal 2, we met up with Todd and Mike from UT Austin, whose robot’s unfortunately hadn’t made it on the same flight. After grabbing Tucker and Henry, we were again guided to the tour bus, which took about 3 hours or so, and finally dropped off at our hotel. A deluge of volunteers processed all the RoboCuppers on the Bus, and got us meal tickets and room keys. Tomorrow we will start breakfast at 6am, in time to be at the Venue for the 7am opening.
Sorry for the lack of updates recently; all of us have been hard at work preparing both the Aibos and Naos for competition in China. The Naos present extremely interesting possibilities for the future, not the least of which is their improved camera.
Here is a picture from the Aibo camera:
Here is a picture from the Nao camera:
Not only is the resolution much improved (640×480 pixels versus 208×168) but also the vantage point allows the Nao to see a lot more of the field at any given time than the Aibo ever could.
There is still a lot of work left to do before competition starts, but we’re ready for it.
Yesterday we scrimmaged the German Team in our lab. The idea is very similar to how we competed at the German Open in April. We sent the German Team a copy of our color table for the lab, and some code that loaded the binary into memory, and Max converted it to the german team’s format.
Our play was comparable to the German Team’s, and we finished the first half leading 1-0 after a lucky shot on goal. The second half ended prematurely after drained batteries and bugs on both sides made play deteriorate, but not until after both teams scored a goal, leaving the final score 2-1. Our major problems came from a bug which keeps the chaser in the grabbing position instead of kicking, resulting in a ball holding penalty, as well as a short episode of ball fright induced by a DEBUG_CHASER switch turned on at half. The German Team’s only issue was an unidentified problem which resulted in the robot ceasing to play soccer and simply swaying back and forth in the middle of the second half.
Unfortunately we were only able to scrimmage 4. v 4. since we our robots are deteriorating quickly. Currently Sam and Pippin are in the shop, and Mike’s leg is about to give out. Even though development on the Aibo is generally straightforward, it is clear that only a few teams (if any!) will be able to muster robots to play again next year if the Aibos are brought back for another year.
Dates for our 2008 Robocup schedule are starting to come together. Right now we are definitely planning on going to the world championships in Suzhou China from July 14-20, and entering in at least the Nao league. We will also probably apply to compete in the Aibo league again, though that’s not for certain at this stage. In addition to China, we will also be attending the local US OPEN in Pittsburgh, Penn. from May 24-27 (no website yet).
Although we considered going to the German OPEN in April, the expense and the lack of Nao’s, as well as our uncertainty about the Aibo’s were all factors in deciding not to go this year. Hopefully we’ll get to go back there again next year and play in the Nao league.
Today the Aibo technical comittee announced a portion of the updated rules for Robocup 2008. The size of the field will be increased by 25% in each dimension, to 5m by 7.5m. This represents an extra 50% of field area! To help take advantage of the new field size, teams will now consist of 5, instead of 4 robots per field. This will be a great opertunity to increase the high level soccer strategy of our team. Since the field is getting larger, the comittee has also hinted that the field lines will get wider to aid in line recognition. The official rules have yet to be published, so we’ll post the details then. The comittee has also called for qualification documents for entry to the Nao league. Presumably our paper will be mostly about why our success in the Aibo league will transfer to success in the Nao league.
http://robocup-cn.org/. Just a shell, though, no content yet.