RoboCup Crailsheim: ER-Force vs. TIGERs Mannheim

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. TIGERs Mannheim

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.

RoboCup Crailsheim

The time has come on the first weekend in April: The RoboCup Crailsheim will take place in the Karlsberghalle in Crailsheim! We are looking forward to presenting our self-made robots to you and to playing exciting games against our friends TIGERs Mannheim, LUHbots (Hanover), RoboTeam Twente (Netherlands) and NAMeC (Bordeaux, France).

The tournament is a great opportunity to learn more about robotics and artificial intelligence at European universities and to see robots from some of the world’s best teams at play.

Come and experience exciting games and a unique atmosphere!

See you on April 1st and 2nd in Crailsheim!