Category Archives: ER-Force

RoboCup Crailsheim: ER-Force vs. TIGERs Mannheim

Posted on by

It came as it had to: ER-Force is in the final against TIGERs Mannheim!

Both teams are tense: As expected, TIGERs Mannheim was able to deliver a more robust performance over the course of the tournament, but ER-Force did better than its competitor against some opponents. An exciting game awaits! The fans obviously knew this too, so that shortly before the start of the game the ranks fill up again: More than 100 spectators can hardly wait when it’s time to say: Let’s play soccer!

Just a few seconds after the kick-off, the spectators can experience the performance of a top-class game: the ball is almost permanently in midfield, the players give their opponents little chance for an attack. If they do, the counterattacks are dangerous, but the teams are usually able to defuse the situation.

So the first half is very exciting and without major interruptions. Finally, TIGERs Mannheim manage to grab the ball and outwit our goalkeeper with a counterattack, which means that the first half is clearly 1-0. Overall, the game appears very balanced; many passing games occur in both halves of the game.

After the second half has started and the automatic ball placement has been deactivated, the game continues as smoothly as in the first half. However, TIGERs Mannheim manages to extend their lead with a second goal during the second half. Nevertheless, the ER-Force team represent a strong adversary. The game finally ends with a wonderful and well-deserved third goal by TIGERs Mannheim.

TIGERs Mannheim is the deserved winner of this tournament and receives its well-deserved trophy at a ceremony! This ends a wonderful tournament in which the teams were able to improve their game. Finally, there is only one thing left to say: See you all in Bordeaux!

RoboCup Crailsheim: ER-Force vs. LUHbots

Posted on by

After we were able to win all of the past games except that against our archenemy and good friend TIGERs Mannheim, we are now playing the game between place 2 (we) and place 3 LUHbots from Hanover.

The outcome of this game is crucial: if we can defend our second place, we’ll be in the starting eleven in the following game for the final. On the other hand, if we lose, we can only watch the game from the stands and LUHbots gets their chance. Accordingly, this game is exciting in every respect!

We were able to score a few goals right after the kick-off, so that by the end of the first half it was already 3-0 to ER-Force. After half-time, however, LUHbots were able to better defend their penalty area and the goal, making it increasingly difficult for us to score goals. Nevertheless, we were able to show our dominance as a long-established team and score another 4 goals, so that the game finally ended in our favor 7:0.

Overall, the game was beautiful to watch. It’s remarkable how much our friends from Hanover have attracted since the last RoboCup 2022. After all, LUHbots is a newly founded team that was only able to take part in a RoboCup! We can’t wait to play against this strong youth team again!

Nevertheless, with this victory and a swollen chest we are on our way to the ultimate game for the strongest team in Europe: ER-Force vs. TIGERs Mannheim at 5:00 p.m.

RoboCup Crailsheim: ER-Force vs. NAMeC

Posted on by

The next match against the French team NAMEC will start soon!

Unfortunately, after there were some problems with the ER Force radio and also the strategy of the French team (e.g. their goalkeeper could only defend our goal, but not their own), the game ended early after a penalty goal by the human referee and a legitimate goal by our robots: NAMeC forfeits!

Unfortunately, the game itself wasn’t all that worth seeing. In order to still enable an exciting and fulfilling gaming experience, especially for the spectators on site, the game between place 2 (ER-Force) and place 3 (LUHbots) was brought forward instead, so that this will take place directly afterwards!

For the die-hard fans, here is the link to the stream of the game ER-Force vs. NAMeC (increasingly peppered with cynical comments towards the end):

RoboCup Crailsheim: ER-Force vs. RoboTeam Twente

Posted on by

Now the last game of the evening is coming up: ER-Force vs. RoboTeam Twente.

Between games we tested all robots, continued to work diligently on the new robot and fixed a number of bugs. At around 8:40 p.m. we start the last game of the evening. Meanwhile without spectators, we and RoboTeam Twente sit relaxed in the hall with shared pizza and watch our robots drive.

Despite the late hour, all participants were able to enjoy the quiet but exciting game to their fullest. At half time it is already 6:0 for ER-Force. The game is fluid and we can cheer on the robots without big interruptions. The work was worth it, all robots drive over the large field without any problems. Hence, our team members were able to watch the game pretty relaxed.

Over the course of the second half, our team fought hard against a RoboTeam Twente, which got stronger every seconds, starting with the beginning of the very tournament. Therfore, every goal was quite the victory and finally we were able to win the game early with 10:0.

RoboCup Crailsheim: ER-Force vs. TIGERs Mannheim

Posted on by

Our second game of the day was against our toughest competition, the reigning world champion from Mannheim: TIGERs Mannheim.

After the game started with some delay, we unfortunately had to deal with some radio problems at first. But since we are already tested in this area, we were able to test our radio frequencies in our timeout and choose the best frequency accordingly.

Despite everything, the game wasn’t as comfortable and fluid to watch at the beginning as we are used to from our games with TIGERs Mannheim. Instead, we had to deal with teleporting robots in our software, i.e. the positions of the robots within our software changed suddenly and unpredictably by many centimeters. Apparently, the robots appeared with a few seconds delay at places where they had previously driven. The reason for this is initially unknown.

Towards the end of the game, however, we were able to find out the reason for this: the data from the cameras was transmitted both over the LAN and over the W-LAN. However, the data from the W-LAN arrives much later than the data via the LAN. Accordingly, we received both “past” and present data, which we interpreted as “current” data at all times. Accordingly, our software could not handle this problem and the robots drove as if they were slightly drunk.

After the W-LAN was switched off, we were able to drive to the balls properly as usual and play our usual nice game. Unfortunately, nine minutes of regular time had already elapsed by this point, leaving us with less than a minute.

Overall, we had to admit defeat to TIGERs Mannheim with a 0:2.