Author Archives: Elisabeth Gareis

Finals Day – Semi-finals

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As mentioned yesterday, we played our match against Tigers Mannheim in the evening. As expected, we lost, but unlike most teams, we weren’t swept off the field 10–0; instead, we managed to hold them to a 2–0 scoreline.

Today—finals day—began with the match to decide who would advance to the final. The winner plays Tigers Mannheim for the championship title at 1:00 PM local time (6:00 AM German time), while the loser secures third place.
Unfortunately, we were unable to win this match against RoboCin; instead, a ball rolled into our own net during the first half, caused by one of our defenders.
Regrettably, we couldn’t equalize, resulting in a 1–0 loss in the semi-final.
Despite our deep disappointment, we are happy for RoboCin and look forward to an exciting final match.

Following the final games, the dismantling of the setup and the awards ceremony will take place, as happens every year. There is no trophy for third place, unfortunately, but a certificate is at least guaranteed.
The closing party will provide a sweet end to the evening for everyone—a fitting conclusion to an exciting RoboCup in Incheon.

Day 3 of the tournament – ​​Elimination + Photoshoot

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After not just one, but two consecutive victories in the friendly matches yesterday evening, our team had to be at the venue early again today. At 8:30 AM, our match against RoboCin took place — a complete nail-biter. Neither side gave an inch, and it was a bitterly fought battle.

With so much suspense, it’s hard to stay in your seat.

After two halves, our batteries were close to their limit, but we pushed through both Halftimes. With the score still locked at 0-0, we had no choice but to go into the penalty shootout, which is similar to a penalty shootout in traditional soccer.

One of our members had completely reimplemented the shootout code after last year’s disaster, but it became clear during the game that this was causing our strategy to crash. So, a quick fix was desperately needed. The man of the hour and our savior was Michel. During the remaining match time, he quickly checked and adjusted the existing code so that it could actually run in the penalty shootout, allowing us to secure a 2-1 victory.
This means one thing is certain: in the worst-case scenario, we can now only drop to 3rd place.

Our next match will take place at 5:30 PM local time (10:30 AM German time) against Tigers Mannheim. The long-standing world champions of the league had a few issues with the venue’s network at the beginning of the competition, but those have surely been resolved by now.
Therefore, we are heading into this match rather pessimistically, but of course, we won’t give up. We will fight until the very end.

It is also worth mentioning that today at 2:30 PM local time, this year’s league photo was taken on the large Div A field. It is beautiful to see every year just how large and diverse our league has become. Right after that, the traditional RoboCup picture was taken as well. This brought out rather mixed feelings.
On one hand, joy over how many parts of the world are united under the banner of the RoboCup; on the other hand, sadness and displeasure because our league will soon no longer be part of RoboCup International. This exclusion of our league was decided last year by the competition’s trustees and will take effect after next year’s competition. Fortunately, however, we are still allowed to participate in regional events.

Second day of the tournament – ​​Elimination

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As we mentioned this morning, our next match was at 3:00 PM local time (8:15 AM German time) against the third-placed team from Group 2, which in our case was KIKS (Japan) — though it was delayed by 15 minutes due to a holdup with the train ahead of us.
I hope you are just as excited as we are about our 6:1 victory!

Our result means that our next official match won’t be until tomorrow at 8:30 AM local time against RoboCin (Brazil). So far, our opponents have two wins and one loss, which was due to a forfeit. Tomorrow’s game is bound to be thrilling, as I highly doubt they will throw in the towel early again.

However, the official schedule doesn’t mean we will be bored tonight. Instead, it gives us the opportunity to play a friendly match at 7:00 PM against the Delft Mercurians (Netherlands), a relatively new team in Div B. After our victory this morning, their team reached out to ask if we had time today. It seems we’ve made quite an impression, especially after last year’s rather mixed performances.
The results of this match will be posted tomorrow morning.

Second day of the tournament – ​​group stage and elimination

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This morning was another very early start to the day, but a well-prepared Jakob had already gotten coffee and kindly shared it with the rest of the early birds. As for myself, I am very grateful — my brain really had trouble booting up this morning.

The reason for waking up early today wasn’t that we had to fix problems in a panic, but rather our 8:30 AM, Korean time, match against Ri-One.
By kickoff at the latest, even the late risers of our team reached the venue to celebrate our victory (2:0).
There were a few difficulties during the match set-up because the connection timeout —meaning the time we accept before it is reported whether a robot still has radio connection — was set incorrectly. But a short timeout right after the kickoff of the match was enough to quickly resolve the issue.

Despite connected robots and no further problems, the first half remained at 0:0. However, by increasing the time allowed for a pass or a pass reception during the break, we were quickly able to score one goal after another.
It was great to see that with a functioning connection to our robots, clearly recognizable plays of our strategy were observable.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

With the result of this match, it is clear: We are second in our group and will therefore play next against the third-placed team of Group 2 at 3 PM local time (8 AM German time). Exactly which team that is has not yet been determined, as we observed a surprising victory by Luhbots against RoboCin.
RoboCin had problems with their robot connection and decided not to compete to avoid damage to their robots. This result throws the entire current group standings into uncertainty.

But what is certain is that we have gained momentum and are looking forward to the next match!

Stay tuned, it’s going to be exciting!

First day of the tournament – ​​Group stage

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A new day brings fresh motivation after a long evening yesterday. Our team was on-site as soon as the hall opened at 7:00 AM local time.
Although the official RoboCup has only just begun, the lack of sleep is starting to take its toll. Hence, our first order of business upon arriving at the hall was to track down some coffee.
Afterwards, a bit more awake, Jakob and Marko got ready to take on our first Ref + GCO slot at 8:30 AM. The schedule for the initial matches is already set, though network issues in the hall have caused significant delays for some games.

Our next match will presumably be at 11:30 AM against Tigers. Before that, we have a test slot at 10:30 AM to verify some final adjustments. We are all hoping our first official match goes better than yesterday’s friendly. That game was, unfortunately, a total disaster — plagued by our famous wireless connection issues. These stem from the Raspberry Pi chips, which scan surrounding networks to determine their location and ensure only legal frequencies are used. However, because the Teams in the hall use various routers configured for different countries, the 6 GHz band — which is crucial for us — is flagged as illegal, even though it is permitted in Korea. In classic ER-Force fashion, our solution is a case lined with aluminum foil to act as a Faraday cage, since the problem only occurs when the robots are booting up.

As always, things remain exciting right down to the last minute.

A livestream link is now available, if you click here, you can watch the matches live or catch up on previous games. For more details on match times, I also recommend checking the tournament schedule linked here.
We look forward to reading your comments in the streams.