I just read an art­icle on heise.de that sum­mar­ises the res­ults of the 13^th Rob­oCup World Cham­pi­on­ships. With a big sur­prise I dis­covered that Ger­hard and his team the b-it-bots won the Rob­oCup @home tour­na­ment and became world cham­pion! A really great achieve­ment, my con­grat­u­la­tions — no, con­grat­u­la­tions from the whole team!

Just like the b-it-bots, the 1. RFC Stut­tgart man­aged to win both, the Rob­oCup Ger­man Open and the World Cham­pi­on­ships 2009. It was a great match against Tech United! Our con­grat­u­la­tions to this great success!

Exult­ant Mood after RFC’s Second GoalFea­tur­ing Andi

It’s been nine years since I first atten­ded a Rob­oCup tour­na­ment. Back in 2001, the Ulm Spar­rows par­ti­cip­ated in the first Rob­oCup Ger­man Open in Pader­born as well as in the Rob­oCup World Cham­pi­on­ships in Seattle. Until 2005, when I finally left the team, we took part in one more world cham­pi­on­ship – in Padua, the social event of which nobody of us will ever for­get, I sup­pose – and four Ger­man Open tournaments.

In 2006, the Ger­man Open didn’t take place in favour of the World Cham­pi­on­ships in Bre­men. In this year, Kobotroll and I par­ti­cip­ated with our own team, the Carpe Noctem Robotic Soc­cer team. We atten­ded with a cus­tom built robot plat­form and soft­ware writ­ten from scratch, but fin­ished sev­enth out of 23 par­ti­cipants. It was really great. Since then, we joined all Ger­many Open tour­na­ments and in 2009 the World Cham­pi­on­ships in Graz.

Because the scene of Rob­oCup World Cham­pi­on­ships is very inter­na­tional, each time in another coun­try, mostly the logist­ics behind the scenes of a team but also the Rob­oCup regis­tra­tion fees are very expens­ive. This is why the Ulm Spar­rows as well as Carpe Noctem were not able to take part in every such tournament.

This year seems to be the last for me in Rob­oCup. As I do not have any act­ive role within this com­munity any more, it’ll be hard for me to con­tinue as before. Carpe Noctem may be kept alive for some addi­tional year(s). I’m nev­er­the­less no mem­ber of the team any longer and thus can­not par­ti­cip­ate the same extend as the past years. Maybe some former co-workers want to con­tinue our work in some way. We’ll have to see, don’t know what’s com­ing next. Maybe it’s the best solu­tion to simply switch over to do some­thing real, some­thing more use­ful than build­ing soccer-playing robots?

I would like to thank the whole team for their com­mit­ment to our pro­ject, their enthu­si­asm, and their inspir­a­tion. Dur­ing the last years, we have cre­ated a group of just great robots! Even though it is some­times not that easy, try to keep your level of motiv­a­tion and maybe con­trib­ute your know­ledge to upcom­ing (cool) pro­jects as well! Thanks!

Carpe Noctem at the Rob­oCup World Cham­pi­on­ships 2009 in Graz, Austria

Ok, once more against Tech United today. Let’s hope for a less crappy game than the last one :) Kick­off is sched­uled for 18:30.

It was a great game!

19:22: End Game

19:zz: Goal! CN 1 – 4 Tech United (time unknown)
19:yy: Goal! CN 1 – 3 Tech United (time unknown)
19:xx: Goal! Goal! CN 0 – 3 Tech United (time unkn­wen)
19:07: Game Star­ted (Second Half)

18:57: Half Time

18:55: Goal! CN 0 – 1 Tech United
18:42: Game Star­ted (First Half)

Our first match in the third round robin is against the 1. RFC Stut­tgart and sched­uled for 16:30. We just star­ted pre­par­a­tions for setup.

Bad news: Mops isn’t work­ing any more. Nobody knows what’s (not) hap­pen­ing. So… yes. We’ll have to start now. Ok, it’s the same with every match against Stut­tgart: always bad luck. Always! Damn it!

17:33: End Game

17:19: Goal! CN 1 – 3 1. RFC Stut­tgart (we fixed the bug; as expec­ted, it was a tiny, tiny damn thing)
17:18: Game Star­ted (Second Half)

17:01: Half Time

16:xx: Goal! Goal! Goal! CN 0 – 3 1. RFC Stut­tgart (we played without goalie)
16:46: Game Star­ted (First Half)