Competition day 1 2011-07-07
First day of competition today. Three matches. Up bright and early-ish to get to the Expo Center in time – our first match was not until 10.30 so that gave us some valuable fiddling time in the morning.
As I can’t post in real time due to the lack of internet at the Expo Center, below is a report on all 3 matches.
Match 1 – 10.30am – Table A7 – against Taipei101
We got to the table more-or-less on time for the match, fielding 2 more-or-less working robots. This was a minor miracle in itself given the problems that have dogged us over the last few weeks, and most particularly the extreme delicacy of the motors we are using.
In the first minute of the match, the curse of the motors struck yet again – after one gave up the ghost while testing in the hotel last night, another one died on the table after about 30 seconds of play, leaving us with 5 only – 2 functioning motors for 1 robot and 3 for the other one.
The (goalie) robot remaining on the table was behaving somewhat oddly as well, preferring to nestle by the pitch wall and not showing any keenness to chasing the ball. It did, however, show a few flickers of interest and we continued playing; Andrew in charge of the robot at the table while Eric had a look at the poorly one.
Taipei101 were speedy and powerful but not particularly accurate in getting the ball to the goal – had they been more accurate they would have scored many more goals. The score got to 7-2 against us and we retired so the boys could have a go at sorting out the robots. Our next match will be at 12.30 pm vs HSHB Australia, and the one after that at 4pm vs Taipei101 again. Both on Table A7. Sadly the boys did not heed Tony’s and my urgings to get the Lego goalie sorted out last night, preferring to devote their time to getting the Al-chassis robots functioning better. So we are now down to 1 robot. I do not know if we will be allowed to substitute the Lego goalie in for the rest of today or if that will have to wait until tomorrow. But if the motors continue to die at the current rate, we will be fielding exclusively Lego robots from tomorrow onwards. Score – 7-2 to them.
Their robots were faster, more powerful, but thankfully not particularly accurate otherwise we would have had many more goals scored against us. Further problems include the green carpet on the pitches that is moulting worse than our ginger cat in summer. Many robots are getting vast amounts of fluff caught around their axles, and the pitches are covered with fluffy green divots at the ends of the matches.
Match 2 – Table A7, 12.30pm vs HBHS Australia
We were relieved to see that we would be playing against a team fielding Lego robots, as we were now fielding a team composed of one temperamental Al-chassis robot and one Lego goalie. Andrew came back from the weighing-in with the robots – the Al-chassis one had to be switched to 2 dark grey batteries as the RoboCup official scales look to be rather variable (and certainly less generous than my digital kitchen scales) and it was apparently 10g overweight.
The Aussie Lego-based team were relatively slow to capitalise on an early tussle that our forward had with our goalie, leaving our goal wide open. Then they very kindly popped the ball into their own goal for us. We appeared to have problems with our forward seeing the ball – or at least, it had a deep-seated reluctance to move towards it – and the opponents decided to make our defender do a bit of work. It put in a stunning couple of saves, and then our opponents obligingly scored another own goal. Our forward had a minute off the pitch, under the Damaged Robot rule, but Eric managed to resuscitate it and make it able to play again. Opposition then put in yet another own goal for us after a scuffle between their 2 robots. And then, our forward robot saw the ball clearly, saw the opponents’ goal, and took the ball towards it and put it in – so at last we had scored a goal of our own. But then, disaster struck. Our forward robot retired, injured. Yet another motor had died, so we were just down to the Lego defender now. The opponent’s goalie went off the pitch, damaged – they were down to one robot now. And then the whistle blew for the end of the first half, and we had a 4-0 lead. In the second half, the opponents returned with 2 robots. We were down to 1 – the defender. During the half-time break, Eric tweaked the code to make it more aggressive – at least, that was the plan – but instead he just made it spend the first few minutes of the second half cowering in its own goal mouth. A few times it made valiant sorties down the pitch, taking the ball towards the opponent’s goal, only to apparently get cold feet half way down and retreat to the safety of its own goal. Still, the opposition were not taking advantage of our indisposition, and the second half ended with no further goals scored, and a final score of 4-0 to the TechnoBotts.
I was very disappointed to find that no RoboCup 2011 t-shirts were available for us – at least, t-shirts were available, but only in size XS, which would not even begin to approach fitting Andrew, Eric or me. The event organisers in Turkey had expected the Junior team members to be rather smaller than they were, apparently, and all the larger sizes had gone already.
Match 3 – Table A7 4pm vs Taipei101 again
As we were in a superteam of 2 teams (rather than one of 3 teams) we ended up playing the team we had played first, again. This was a feature of RoboCup last year that we didn’t really enjoy – if a team beats you in the morning, then they’re pretty likely to beat you in the afternoon as well. So, we played Taipei101 again – the team we met in the first match this morning. We’d met these guys before and knew they were going to be good – the question was, by how much would they beat us this time, and, more importantly, would our Al-chassis robot survive a whole match without a motor dying? The match got off to a poor start, with our forward robot losing an IR-sensor early on while oppo slammed a goal in. We also discovered that when the opposing robots drove into ours fast, they shorted the power line on ours which made it restart, and then sit patiently waiting for someone to press the power button. Unfortunately this counted as a “damaged robot” under the rules, so each time this happened we had to wait for a minute before we could restart it and return it to the table. We then helped oppo by putting an own goal in (our forward robot) then they slammed another one in past us. Following a protracted 3-way tussle (2 of our robots and one of theirs) our goalie leant back on the ball (which was right behind it, so it couldn’t see it) and pushed it in. The Taipei101 forward stormed down the pitch pushing the ball and our forward robot in front of it; this was not allowed as a goal due to the “pushing” rule. Their forward suddenly got careless and took the ball the wrong way up the pitch and they scored an own goal for us. We shed 4 IR-sensors during collisions with the opposition; during a pause in play while they were discussing a point with the ref, Eric reinstalled them. The score at the end of the first half was 6-1. In the second half, we scored an own goal early on, then our goalie did some impressive defending work and at one point took the ball up to the goal but didn’t get it in. Our forward shed a couple more sensors along the way, after which it decided to take up residence in the opposition’s goal, for which it was taken off for 1 minute as a damaged robot. Taipei101 scored again. Our goalie held his own well and came close to scoring another goal for us, and although he tried hard he could not prevent the opposition scoring a few more goals. Final score was 13-1 to Taipei101.
However, this was the only match in the competition where we did not have a motor die, which was good. Tomorrow – we wait to see what the superteam draw will be and who we will be playing in the morning. I’ve told the boys to ready the Lego forward. If we don’t need it tomorrow we will certainly need it on Saturday. We have just one spare motor left now – so if 2 motors die on the pitch, that’s the new robot out of the game completely. I think we will have to send the dead motors back to Pololu and see if we can get a refund as so far 6 out of 10 purchased have failed. And at $20 per motor, that’s worth pursuing.