Competition day 2 2011-07-08

We were right to aim to get to the Expo Center early today. Our first match is at 9am. There are also forbidding signs up saying that soccer robots must be inspected BEFORE the match they play in – no sticker, no game. Fair enough. The boys are aware that they need to get the robots weighed in pre-9am match – that was the reason for struggling out of bed so early. We have been drawn to be in a superteam of 3 today, not 2. I see that one of our opponents is HSHB Australia, who we played (and beat) yesterday. We are in superteam 12, consisting of us, FRT-A and A.I. Superteam 12 plays against Superteam 13, which consists of Keepon, Munako-Amateras and HBHS Australia. In round 1, the matches are: 9:00 am – TechnoBotts vs Keepon 10:00 am – FRT-A vs Munako-Amateras 10:30 am – AI vs HBHS Australia I’m guessing that we will play Munako-Amateras in round 2, and HBHS-Australia in round 3. Our chances today depend on 2 things:

  1. Whether our motors hold up – we have just 1 motor in hand now to act as a replacement in an emergency for the AL-chassis robot
  2. What Keepon and Munako-Amateras are like.

Match 1, Day 2. Table A6 vs Keepon (from Canada)

Well, that was unexpected – just returned from watching the first match of today’s play, in which we played Team Keepon. They are from Canada – there are 2 teams from there, Team A.I. (who are on the same superteam as us today) and I recognised the mentors from Singapore last year. We were fielding the Al-chassis forward robot, and the Lego goalie, which Eric had spent some time on last night to make it genuinely more aggressive so that it wouldn’t just lurk in its own goal quivering gently but actually go forwards and seek out the ball and aim to put it into the goal. It was a surprise to us to find that the Canadian teams was not as strong as we were anticipating – the CA guys were using homebrew hardware, but it was not of the speed and ferocity of those of some of the teams we have played. They also had reliability issues – I believe the moulting carpet was troubling them. After some strong defensive work on their part, we put a goal in past them and then another one. Our forward robot was sprinkling IR-sensors in its wake which the ref and Eric retrieved and I stood holding until there was an opportunity for Eric to replace them. We then had the thing we’d been expecting/dreading – after 4 minutes of the first half one of the Al-chassis robot’s motors died. Andrew took it back to the pit area to operate on it, but did not manage to repair it in time to rejoin the match so we were a robot down for the remainder of the game. Our goalie, though, really came into its own – the reprogramming it had received last night made it a force to be reckoned with, and it scored four more goals, bringing the score at the end of the first half to 6-0 to the TechnoBotts. We started the second half one robot down, and the opponents slipped an early goal in, but this was disallowed by the ref as he had not yet blown the whistle for the second half to start. Once the second half had officially started, we scored, and then scored again. Towards the end of the second half, both Keepon’s robots were taken off as damaged, leaving the goal wide open, and our goalie made the most of it and put a couple more in, unchallenged. One of Keepon’s robots returned and put up a spirited midfield defence, but then it retired damaged again, and the other Keepon robot returned. Now both Keepon’s robots were on the pitch again, versus our one goalie robot, but one of them went off almost immediately leaving the goal open for us to score again. Keepon’s goalie then returned and saved a goal that we tried to put in. We tried to get it in again, but missed. Almost at the end of the second half, both Keepon’s robots were back in play, and there were some hotly contested attempts by our goalie to get possession of the ball. It succeeded, and popped another one in, just before the final whistle, leaving the score at the end of the match as 13-0 to the TechnoBotts.

We now await the times and fields for our second and third matches today. If all goes well, we hope to beat the HBHS Australia team again. The Japanese team, Munako-Amatera, will be a different kettle of fish entirely. Their mentor was watching our match against Keepon, and taking notes.

Match 2 – 12.30, pitch A6, against HBHS Australia.

Turns out I was wrong in my guess as to the order in which we would play the remaining teams. We meet the Australian team again now.

In the time between the first and the second matches, we (Andrew!) have been repairing the AL-chassis robot with the dead motor, switching in our one remaining motor. It remains to be seen how long the robot will last now before another motor goes, and also if it is possible for us to withdraw a dead robot and substitute our Lego forward robot. We might be playing the last match of the day with just the Lego goalie if we are unlucky. And if we are very unlucky, we will have to play all tomorrow with just the Lego goalie as well. We’ve also been upstairs meeting the Edinferno team who are competing in the Standard Platform League for the first time. We saw their third match this morning 11.20-11.45. (They lost, but are hoping to return the favour and come and watch our second match on Table A6 at 12:30). There’s some doubt at present as to who we will be playing in the last match of the day – it is possible that it will be either Keepon again or else HSHB. It’s up to the superteams to decide, apparently – I assumed that we would automatically play each team in the opposing superteam once, but this is not the case. We met the Lego and other materials team again that we’d played yesterday in the lunchtime slot. Before the match started, the ref was grumbling about the condition of the pitch – the cheap green carpet used for the pitches has not stood up well to RoboCup use at all. Apparently all the carpets will be changed tonight and so will be fresh for the morning.

The whistle went, and our robots started on the offensive, with most of the action centring around the opponents’ goal. We were quite good at hiding the ball from their robots so they couldn’t see it, although our Al-chassis robot was also rather too good at impeding the progress of the aggressive Lego goalie we had and that would have scored a couple of times had the Al-chassis forward not got in the way. Opponent’s robots were on and off the pitch several times. We almost scored several times, notably at 2 ½ and 3 minutes, and put our first goal in after 4 minutes of intense action. After the kick-off, our goalie and forward again had an unseemly scramble for possession of the ball, and after some jousting our forward popped it in at 7 minutes. Both HBSC’s robots went off damaged after this goal, leaving it wide open for us to score further, and despite our robots impeding each other, the forward popped another one in at 8 minutes.

The half-time whistle blew, with the score at 5-0 to the TechnoBotts.

After changing ends and a 5-minute break, the second half restarted. One of the HBHS robots went off damaged early on, but despite this there was a moment about 1 1/2 minutes in to the second half where HBHS looked as if they were about to score. However, our goalie intercepted it, and took the ball to the other end of the table and put a goal in for us 2 minutes into the half. Just before 3 minutes, the opposition then scored an own goal – so we were now 7 up. The action transferred to the goal we were attacking, with our forward dithering in front of the goal for a while, leaving our goalie to nip past and put another one in – 8-0. Our Al-chassis robot went off damaged and our goalie had to take on the 2 opposing robots before it returned to the table. Then, after a tussle with an opponent and a nasty crunching sound, our Al-chassis robot went off, another motor irreparably damaged, leaving the goalie to wrap up the match by scoring the last couple of goals on its own. Full-time score: 10-0 to the TechnoBotts.

Day 2, match 3 – Table A6, 3pm

This was the match that we were fearing most today, having seen the Japanese robots in action earlier in the day. Also, we were a robot down now.

Muneko-Amatera were more than a match for us, with fast, agile robots that ran rings around our poor Lego goalie. It put up a spirited defence, but was outclassed completely in terms of speed and responsiveness. Their robots were stopped and moved for pushing a lot, but even when one of their robots went off damaged, they were still putting in goal after goal, most of the action centring around the end of the pitch containing our goal. At the end of the first half, the score was 18-0 to them.

In the second half, they started off fielding only one robot, and we came close to scoring when our goalie tried hard and almost got a ball to the goal at around the 1 minute mark, but the opposing robot nipped around, grabbed the ball and took it to the other end of the pitch and scored. Then their red robot returned to the pitch, and they scored again and again, including one own goal. The black robot was taken off damaged, leaving our goalie versus their red robot. Again, it attempted to seize the moment and took the ball down to the other end of the pitch, but sadly went wide of the goal. But then we had another chance – and this time our goalie took it and made the most of it and we scored a goal just before the final whistle. Final score: 25-2 to Munako-Amatera.