I just read an article on heise.de that summarises the results of the 13th 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)