So here are the 24 applicants trying to get Nao’d:

1. BabyTigers DASH
2. BreDoBrothers
3. Cerberus
4. CMU-GT
5. Eagle Knights
6. Humboldt Berlin
7. Isfahan
8. Kouretes
9. Mi-PAL
10. Northern Bites
11. NUbots
12. NUIM
13. rUNSWift
14. RWTH-TUG-UCT
15. sharPKUngfu
16. SpelBots
17. SPQR
18. TeamChaos
19. TecRams
20. TJArk
21. UChile
22. UT Austin Villa
23. UWarriors
24. WrightEagle

And here are my notes:

• BreDo Brothers == Bremen (Thomas Rofer) + Dortmund (Walter and Matthias). They both did Humanoid teams last year, giving them a big leg up.
• CMU-GT == Carnegie Mellon + Georgia Tech. Should be interesting.
• Humboldt Berlin. Interesting that they’re in it. I heard they were going to just do the Humanoid League this year. Certainly, a standard platform is more attractive than doing hardware, to an Aibo team.
• NUbots. Again, another team I thought had jumped ship.
• rUNSWift. This is an awesome, old team that has won twice, consistently have finished high, and finished second in 2006. They didn’t compete this year, but it seems that they are back with the excitement of a new platform.
• RWTH-TUG-UCT. This is a German + Austrian + South African team. Potentially, the first RoboCup team from Africa. Also, they’ve got the World Cup in 2010, going to be held in South Africa, angle.

Now we’ve got to think regionally: two Mexican teams (Eagle Knights and TecRams), three Chinese teams (TJArk, WrightEagle, sharPKUngfu), four Aussie teams (Mi-PAL, NUbots, UNSW, UWarriors), and four US teams (CMU-GT, nBites, SpelBots, Austin). I’m thinking that the committee weighs regions. Teams that merge will have a lot better chance of getting in. It’ll be interesting to see what happens