ER-Force on their way to the venue

The day started, as usual, with a hearty breakfast – a small ritual that brings some structure to the morning. Afterwards, we walked to the venue along the beach, enjoying a brief moment of calm before things got intense. Once inside the hall, everyone immediately got to work – the task distribution had already been set during the previous evening’s team meeting. Whether charging batteries, calibrating bots, or preparing systems, everyone knew their role. Time was short, as our first pass challenge match against Tigers was scheduled for 12 PM local time.

Unfortunately, things didn’t go smoothly. The downlink (Rückkanal) wasn’t functioning properly on the Funkmaster, the robots’ encoders – extra lines from the motors to the firmware that report wheel positions – were unreliable, the kickers failed, and even field testing didn’t run as expected. The result: both pass challenge matches against Tigers and ZJUN went poorly. We ended up in third place – last, although only three out of five teams participated.

Technical challenge vs TIGERs

Another challenge: this year’s carpet is extremely slippery, which made dribbling significantly more difficult. Ball control was noticeably worse compared to our usual testing conditions.

After the matches, the entire team shifted into bug-fixing mode. The downlink was finally fully implemented – too late for the challenge, but a big step forward nonetheless. From this point on, testing our software directly on the field became much easier.

We had another test slot in the evening, during which we intensively tested all the fixes from the day. Many bugs seem to be resolved – for example, the bots are now overshooting less. It feels like we’re slowly getting back on track.