fresh out of premiere, 9.5 minutes highlight video of all the games we played from round robin to the finals, made by stefan. full game video coming, i hope :)

the last game with Plasma-Z from Thailand was very intense, longest game ever, ran for more than an hour and a half. we had 3:1 by end of first half[15min]. during half time both side made minor adjustment to the code, our for the worst and theirs for the better. by the end of second half, they caught up to 5:5. so we went into over time [2 5min halves], it was 6:5 for most of it, but they scored again at the last few second, and so we were tied again at 6:6. so we went into penalty shoot out, luckily we have a well tested almost flawless penalty defender, #5, our prototype robot, saved our butts, we won with 9:7. a VIP from NSF said this game was the best one of all the robocup matches this year. this this also the first time in 9 years of small size history, that a 2 years old robot beat all the new robots and won. pics and videos coming soon.

our aibo/4 legged league team got 3rd, beating Wright Eagle from China. apparently they also went into over time.

uploading more pictures to picasa at:
http://picasaweb.google.com/luisa.lu/RoboCup2007Atlanta



there is an official pool of robocup pictures on flicker at:
http://www.flickr.com/groups/robocup/pool

Small size finished our round robins games today, we did well. There hasn't been too many surprises so far, the top teams are us, CMDragon [CMU, dah], Plasma-Z from thailand [don't know which univ] and ZJU from china [zhejiang university], followed by RoboDragons from japan [APU], KIKS also from japan [don't know which univ], and Wright Eagle from china [not sure which univ, some name with tech in it]. The quarter finals and semi finals will be on saturday, and finals will be on sunday. Nothing tomorrow, half the teams need to move on to our field and we all have to move our things as facility people reconfigure the space to fit more spectators for the finals.
They have a wiki set up this year, here is small size result page. I'm in charge of updating the result, but we have very limited internet access at the venue, and I don't like wiki formating for anything complicated, so it's all in pdfs, which I need to make for the teams anyway.
I will try to take more pictures of small size during the finals, but picture doesn't really do whole lot justice, need video for the fast actions. We did few very awesome passings and receptions in our game against RoboDragons. Also used our new weapon, which Jim calls yanking, and scored a backward goal today against B-Smart. Maybe wait for Jim to put stuff up on youtube afterwards. In the mean time, check out the kicker test video from 2006 and highlights from 2006 robocup. Hm... looks like ppl are posting stuff on youtube already, but no small size =/

uploading pictures to picasa ...



http://picasaweb.google.com/luisa.lu/RoboCup2007Atlanta

im at georgia tech for robocup, helping jim with small size. we get to stay in their freshman dorms, bunk beds, dorm furniture, shared bathrooms with shower stalls, registering computer for the subnet. room look exactly like sab and tchan's room in e tower, except i think this suppose to be boys dorm, because we have urinals in our bathroom. took me half hr to get online, turns out my nifty radio shack ethernet cable that rewinds it self, is busted. didn't bring a pair of sandals for the shower stall, no caddy to haul my toiletries, stuff keep falling out of my arms. my roommate got here in the middle of the nite. at least they have A/C, but i had to turn it off, it got too cold for me to wear summer pj that i brought, end up wearing long pants to bed.

Jim and i are leaving suzhou for shanghai today. He was invited to the first robocup china open, held in suzhou industry park, and i came along to help. The competition was very well organized, held in conjuntion with 6th? china robot competition. So it was pretty big, Jim said its one of the better organized robocup open, might be better than some international robocup even. Most of the leagues from robocup was presented, also some leagues from fira and maybe more. There was also some live performaces, suzhou local tv channel broadcasting live, and cctv special recording at the end, with plenty other media rep around, there was quite alot of visiters too since it was held during China golen week (about 5 days around chinese national day). There was about 8 teams participated in small size league, we won in the end, but it was not as easy as one would think. The top chinese team from zhejiang university was very good, they made it in to the quarter final in germany. We never got to play them there, but we ended up playing them 3 times here. Round robin was 10:0, final was 7:2 (first half), and exhibition game was 4:3 (first half), you can see they grew alot with in 3 days of the compeition. Jim was like a celebrity around here, well atlease around the field everytime he was free or when we open up the robots (other times we just get stared at). Every one was very eager to learn and ask for advise, though they then to touch the robot with out asking too much. We didnt end up visiting the city at all, industrial park is about 30min drive from the main city, its a huge fast growing town, with lots of huge new buildings but pretty empty during the golden week. Maybe we will come back for it later.

team pic with ZheJiang University
kids from frog dance, post competition CCTV special recording

There been a few stories flying around about RoboCup, most of them focused on the humanoid league, while they are easier to relate to, the league is much too new to be interesting. The older leagues like small size, mid size and 4 legged are much more developed and more interesting to watch. I really wanted to post about Small Size, but couldn't find any good up to date public media, maybe later this week. But I managed to find 2 interesting movies related to the 4 Legged League to share:

RoboCup 2005 Final: German Team vs NuBots

Music video of Aibo from 2002 - what the robot sees

robocup update! [plug another blog]

looks like CMPack is doing well ^___^ won 3/3 in round robin, though against bunch no name teams, but still a good sign. though from the look of it, they didnt seed the tables very well, group A UPen and UT Austin are pretty good; group B i only heard of NuBots and Huskies; group C ours, dont know any other teams...; group D both UNSW and Gernman team are past champs, the only new team in that group is team chaos i think.

cat vs dogs

no score for us from small size and simulation yet =/ though group A from small size is up. yet another bad case if seeding, for cornell to go against lucky star, two past champs. looks like cornell didnt do so well there. CMRoboDragon went against field rangers, ouchi, that a pretty strong team, hope we did well...

blue update :3
went swimming yesterday with krispy, well i still cant really swim so it was more like playing in the pool ^^;; i realized that i wasnt holding my breath while under water, so i was sinking alot, which helped abit after trying to correct that. i also found out i lost weight but gained fat >__<
unrelated news, i think i have found someone to take the attic! weee!!!

yet unrelated, not even news, richie said he wanna mod his fish tank to a pc, which reminded me of this really cool case mod site and teddybear is still my favorite case mod ->

Team		Score*	Comment

RoboRoos 		4/4	(Australia): beat Big Red in round robins

Cornell Big Red 	1/4	(US): 2002 (1st), 2001 (3rd), 2000 (1st), 1999 (1st) 

Plasma-Z 		1/3	(Thailand): 1st in Thailand

FU Fighters 	4/4	(German): 2002 (2rd), 2001 (SM), 2000 (2nd), 1999 (2nd?) 

Field Ranger 	2/4	(Singapore): 2002 (QT), 2001 (2nd), 2000 (QT) 

Osayans		1/4	(Japan):

CM Dragons 	4/4	(US): 2002 (QT), 2001 (QT), 2000 (NA), 1999 (QT), 

                                               1998 (1st), 1997 (1st)

Robo Dragons 	2/4	(Japan): 2002 (QT)

TPOTS		2/4	(German): 2nd in German Open

Lucky Star 	5/5	(Singapore): 2002 (3nd), 2001 (1st), 2000 (3rd), 1999 (3rd) 

5dpo 		4/5	(Portugal)

Makushita 	2/4	(Japan):

Toin Albatross	1/4	(Japan):

*only count wins

without their advior, cornell is in really bad shape this year. we completely crushed them at american open, though we thought they would come back for robocup, since they were always good at last minute boosting and tweaking, but guess not
another suprise this year is field rangers, i remember them being pretty good in the past. with them and cornerll out of the picture, the top teams to watch out for this year are roboroos (who didnt even make it to quarter finals last year), then of course the all time top teams, lucky star and fu fighters. though 5dpo won 4/5 games in round robins, they lost to lucky star with 0, and none of the teams they beat made into the quater final. it seems they got second place in german open this year, maybe there will be something interesting to see for their game against fu fighters today, but probabbly just some bruises, as fu fighters are usually pretty aggressive.
anywho, we should have no problem winning against field ranger and toin albatros at todays game.

luisa reporting from work...

robocup 2003

today is last day of round robbin, both small size and aibos are doing very good ^____^
earlier i couldnt find the score board, and some of the other pages arent very up to date, like the team page doesnt list any of US teams, the report page doesnt show cmu teams score. i was so scared and thought maybe something happend and we had to withdraw (i almost cried T___T). but then i poked around some more and found the right pages, what a relieve. we should have no problem getting into quater final, hope we do just as well there hehe

small size (CMDragon) score
aibo (CMPack) score
last year's report

[report coming soon...]