PALB VII robots at the World Championship in Istanbul

Our trip started at Sunday morning. First we flew to Munich and from there to Istanbul. We arrived on time and took a taxi to the Lisesi high school where we stayed (http://www.istanbullisesi.net/). It is very close to the center of Istanbul and we had a great view on the Bosporus river and the city.

On Monday and Tuesday we did big sight-seeing tours so we visited nearly every interesting place for example the Blue Mosque.

Wednesday started the Robocup Junior registration. The fastest way to get to the trade fair area was the tram. A 40 minutes tour but the air condition made this endurable because outside temperature was more than 30 °C everyday (and not much cooler at night)! After registration process we searched our tables in the team area. While searching our places we noticed that the colour of the fields was more yellow than green. So it would be hard to differ between the yellow goal and the green field. However after some adjustments of our camera processing the robots managed this task quite well.

Competitions took place from Thursday till Sunday: Only one lost game retarded us from getting into the semi-final rounds after a very successful world championship in Istanbul. Moreover we are the best positioned German team this year. Anyway the robots were working fine and stable all the time. The only problem we had was the quality of the field: After some matches the fields began to form fluff which was caught by our wheels and blocked them. This problem was sighted at most other teams too. So we had to clean the wheels very often.

As you may noticed when reading the informaton on our poster our robots are able to perform passes. This special development is in an early test phase. In the matches the robots tried it 2 or 3 times but unfortunately failed. It is very complex and we are the only team who is able to do this at the moment. Indeed on the testfields in Istanbul we did some passing successfully. Some video footage will be published later.

The team spirit as always was very good and meeting the other teams from all aorund the world is still amazing.

However the trip to Istanbul was a great experience. It is a beautiful city and worth a tour for everybody.

Some photos are uploaded here: http://twitpic.com/photos/CPALB There will be more .

THANKS TO OUR SPONSORS WHICH MADE THIS TRIP POSSIBLE!!! And a very, very, very big "THANK YOU" to our mentor Dr. Schmitz who organised the journey and conducts us for so many years.

Future of C-PALB:

As three members (Alex, Max, Lukas) have left school this summer and heading to university now Caspar is the only remaining team member at the moment. He is searching for new members and there are some promissing outlooks. Surely we will carry on supporting Caspar and his new team members as mentors.

PALB VII robots on the left. German Open 2011

Same procedure as last year: the German Open took place in Magdeburg, Germany. We started our trip on Wednesday at 8:00 am. After a six hour bus ride we arrived at the trade fair area and entered the hall in which the Junior tournament was placed. Wednesday was the set-up day. In the evening we left the venue and drove to the camping ground.

We had to get up early at 6.30 am on Thursday morning. The competition began with three matches to play. Unfortunately we lost two out of three because we had problems with our battery protection system (the opponent teams were: Tactic (lost); FRT-B (won); Antitischhochheber (lost)). In addition to fixing the problem we could optimize our robots overnight by fine-tuning several situations.

The result of these measures were very successful: On Friday we had to play against JaMO-Uhrwerk. This was our only game on this day and we won this one. At the end of the day we were ranked on 5th place after 4 rounds of competition.

After another night of fixing hardware problems and programming more tactics we had two games to play on Saturday. The first was C-PALB vs. LG Robots: Again our hardware and especially our tactics were really effective so this game was another important victory for our team. After this round we made a little jump on the ranking: from position five to position 4. Only one place behind our next opponents: the team Dunkle Macht. This match was quite close. Halftime score was 7:2 so we had a comfortable lead. Things changed in the second half of the game. After a few minutes we had to alternate with taking out the goalie or the striker because our striker often went into the goal area. Still we were able to defend our lead and won 10:8. At the end of the competition day we were ranked on third position with only one game left to play on Sunday. To avoid problems we modified the striker to never enter the goal area, which could happen in special situations before. In addition to that we had some issues with the rubber rings of our sub-wheels: After a while of usage they began to crack. In the evening we assembled 4 wheels with the remaining and new rubber rings.

Sunday was the last competition day. We had to play against Quattros. The first half was very tough: 5:4 at the break. In the second halftime we were able to extend our lead a little bit. Final score was 11:6. So after seven rounds of playing we finished on a really satisfying second place. As German vice champion we are now allowed to attend the world championship which is going to take place in Istanbul at the beginning of July.

This is going to be a special event for three of us because it will be the last Robocup Junior tournament we will take part in as competitors. After our exams we are going to leave school this summer.

Final results can be found here:

http://www.robocupgermanopen.de/de/junior/results?event=Soccer+B&round=All&field_team_value=

http://www.robocupgermanopen.de/de/junior/position?event=Soccer+B

A new video which will show some clips of our games (with special tactics) is being produced at the moment and will be available soon. Moreover you can expect two new robot categories on our homepage in the next days which explain PALB VI and the current used PALB VII to all interested readers. Furthermore we have published a new team picture. You may find it in the "Our Team" category.

A few more photos are uploaded here: http://twitpic.com/photos/CPALB

Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/CPALB

PALB VII: Striker on the left, goalie on the right

As in 2010 the host of a Robocup Junior warm up tournament was Deutsches Museum Bonn from 26th-27th february. Organized by our school, the tournament was an opportunity for the teams of the region to test their robots before attending the German Open (31.3.2011 - 3.4.2011 in Magdeburg). This year we even had some special guests from Stonyhurst College in England who took the long trip to Bonn.

After packing the robots, tools and all other stuff in our cars we arrived on saturday morning at the venue (compared to our English guest students from abroad the distance is quiet short for us: 10 minutes by car). Saturday was ought to be for testing sessions only so we were pretty relaxed. At 17:00 with robots prepared for sunday we left the museum.

The competition began at 10:30 on sunday morning: We had a total of three games and by being victorious in each of them we finished first place. The prize contained a package of sweets donated by Deutsches Museum Bonn. We are going to place them at our working room at school in case of running low on food ;-)

The PALB VII robots were running fine through the competition. On the other hand we know that we'll have to improve several things for the German Open in Magdeburg if we want to have a realistic chance to qualify for the world championship in Istanbul, Turkey.
We are looking forward to both events as it will be the last time attending them in the Junior category for four of us. After graduation we are no longer allowed to participate in this class.

Stay tuned for more news on our robots, images and the German Open 2011!

The German Open 2010 took place in Magdeburg form 14.4-18.4.2010. Different to the years before this was the only official tournament. There were no pre-qualification competitions and as a result of this there were many more teams at the venue than in the past years.
The days before we went to the German Open were hard-working days (and nights!) for the whole team because we had to finish our new robots. Even on the busride we were working on the hardware and software stuff. Then with just thirty minutes left before our first game we realized that we wouldn´t be able to compete with our new robots. The cause were heat problems with our motor drivers which resulted in damaged motor circuit boards.
We didn´t want to risk any more damages because everything else on the robot worked fine (especially the new control electronics with ARM9 CPU and a touchscreen) so we were looking for an alternative plan.
Luckily we had taken our old striker PALB V with us as a backup and were able to get it ready to run in time. Although this robot is two and a half years old and travelled around the world (In 2008 to China and last year to Austria) we were able to win some matches.
The biggest disadvantage was that we had to play with only one robot against two opponents and as a result of this we lost our games against the top teams but finished on a good 9th place with a balanced goal statistic (51:52). All in all we were quite happy that PALB V was running well although we weren´t able to qualify for this years world championships in Singapore.
Now we are improving our new robots for the next season with the help of many experiences we made in this week.

Check this link and select "Version B" in the dropdown-menu for the Robocup German Open result table:
http://www.robocup-german-open.de/result_robosoccer