Category Archives: Robot Generation

Welcome to Bordeaux!

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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.

Workshop February 2023

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In order to get our robots fit for the upcoming games and tournaments and to assemble them, we held a workshop on the last weekend in February 2023.

On Friday afternoon, the work in the subteams started straight away. The construction and calibration of a playing field as a replacement for our currently unusable basement was particularly important on this day. The chair FAPS kindly provided us with an area in its hall. There we first had to roll out the carpet, set up the bands and attach our camera for the vision system to the ceiling. The vision could then be calibrated step by step starting in the evening, so that testing in the field could begin on Saturday. Finally, we let the evening end with a pizza we ordered together and talks.

Saturday started at 10 a.m. with a joint breakfast and a presentation of the work status and goals for the weekend. In electronics, for example, the weekend was all about soldering and testing new boards for the robot fleet.

In the firmware, work was mainly done on the firing logic and the regulation. This also required numerous test drives on the new replacement pitch.

In addition, the strategy team worked diligently on a numerical simulation of our shot. With the background information from the various areas of our team, we have set up a very extensive dynamic model. From this we want to derive improvements in the hardware and a more accurate model for the shooting behavior.

On Sunday we started again with breakfast together, before the projects were then pursued further in the individual sub-teams. In this way, many tasks could be successfully solved before the workshop ended in a cozy get-together in the afternoon.