We continue our work on the robot on this day as well. Since the early morning hours, our team has been busy assembling the robots, soldering boards, and writing numerous lines of code for our AI. Robots constantly shuttle between the electronics and firmware teams, the sound of the mechanical team’s hand-held Dremel tool resonates throughout the entire floor, as does the continuous playing of “Never Gonna Give You Up” from the firmware room.

To give the team a little break, we have scheduled a journal club at 1:00 p.m., where all of our team members gather to discuss and determine the best publications from other teams. This is one of the tasks we must undertake as a team, as the “Best Paper Award” is awarded based on the votes of all teams. After several more hours of work, we finally transitioned to the relaxing part of the evening: cooking together and unwinding with a bottle of French wine.

It was quite fitting that we cooked pasta – after all, our robot generation is named “Pasta” as well. Thus, dinner was an homage to our metallic midfielder No. 9 – “Fussilli.”

Having been nourished, we are eagerly looking forward to tomorrow when we will finally enter the exhebition hall, and we hope to conduct some tests with our robots on the actual playing field.

In two days, the time has finally come: RoboCup 2023 in Bordeaux begins! But before we can really get started, the first task is to arrive properly.

And this is not so easy: After an exhausting and sometimes nerve-wracking train journey of 22 hours, accompanied by some very last-minute changes in plans from our beloved friend, Deutsche Bahn, we finally arrive at our hotel on Saturday evening. The journey and our associated emotions can be summarized very vividly with the following image:

After unloading all the suitcases in the hotel rooms, it’s time to relax and reflect on the day. The numerous French restaurants make the decision for dinner not easy, but eventually, everyone finds something delicious to eat. Our robots also enjoyed a good glass of “Grand Vin de Bordeaux,” and so the day ends in a relaxed manner.

Refreshed and fueled up, the next day we start by organizing our tools and doing some initial work on the robot. The goal is to have the entire fleet of robots ready for action by Monday evening, one day before we are allowed to enter the convention hall. Whether we succeed or not, you will find out soon.