After the loss of our last motor in the last game we played yesterday, we are wondering if we will be able to declare 2 Lego robots this morning, or if we will be forced to play with just one robot, as when the team’s robots were initially registered they comprised 1 new robot and 1 Lego robot.
Andrew has been endeavouring to make the single remaining semi-functional new robot work with just 2 motors rather than 3, but this will compromise its functionality greatly and the best it can really hope to achieve is acting as a semi-mobile impediment to the other team’s robots.

Our first match today will be on an only slightly-churned-up pitch, at 9.30a.m., vs Luwan Senior High School. The superteam arrangements today are:
Superteam 20 – NR-1, Luwan Senior High School, A.I.
Superteam 21 – Luwan Middle School, TechnoBotts, St Ursula
We know of A.I. – if we have 2 robots we can probably beat them; if we have 1, we might or might not. And NR-1 are playing now, so I had better go and check them out.
OK, NR-1 look good, but not forbiddingly good – we might be able to score some goals against them if we are lucky.
Our first match was late to start because of an altercation involving several referees (including some very senior ones) and lots of shouting and tears in the previous match on the table, which was NR-1 vs Luwan Middle School. I think that part of it was because they had more than one person handling the robots, and the additional people were reluctant to leave the robots alone, but I think there was more to it than that. I advised my team to do what the ref told them, not to argue with the ref, and on no account to burst into tears and flounce off mid-match.

Day 3 – Match 1 – pitch A6 – Luwan Senior High School, 9.30 a.m.

When we finally started, it was with a pair of Lego robots, the forward robot having been dusted off, but sadly not re-programmed despite my urgings to the boys to do so. The pitch had a new carpet on it to replace the one that had been worn out from 2 days of play already, although it was already looking somewhat worse for wear after hosting just one match. Also, the carpet appeared to be incredibly slippery – our omni-wheels were sliding around a lot.
Despite fielding 2 robots, out attacker robot went off as a damaged robot early on, as it was just going round in circles – not sorting out its software last night is the cause of that, I reckon.
The other team were faster than us – a good deal faster than us – but their accuracy was not all it could be. Nonetheless they took full advantage of our attacker’s absence and put in 4 goals before it returned to the pitch.
Now that we were fielding 2 robots again, we were able to shield the ball from the other robots a bit better so they didn’t keep possession of it so much. Our aggressive goalie took the ball up the pitch in a spirited attempt to score, as our attacker seemed to have switched to defensive mode, but the Luwan senior robots intercepted it, captured it, and then scored, twice. Well, we thought this was always likely to be a tough match.
There was then much jousting and jostling around the centre circle. The ball was moved several times due to lack of progress, before the robots locked horns again. And at one point the ball was moved to a spot that was not at all favourable to us, and the Luwan robots whizzed past and put it in our undefended goal.
Next their forward took the ball down the pitch towards the goal we were aiming for before thinking better of it and returning to try to put it in our goal again. Our robots were struggling to make much headway as their wheels were so lacking in grip.
The score at the end of the first half was 9-0 to the Luwan team.
The second half was more of the same. As we were fielding 2 robots for all of the time, who made valiant efforts but were not really a match for the other team, we managed to impede them a little, and they only scored 5 more goals in the second half, plus an own goal from us when the ball was moved due to lack of progress and our goalie reversed (because it couldn’t see it, not realising the ball was behind it) and put it into our goal. So the final score was 16-0. We can hope for better matches – there are 2 more today. The one against AI should be reasonably close – that is at 1pm – and the one against NR-1 is an unknown quantity but I’m hoping that if we do lose it, it won’t be by more than a few goals.

Day 3, match 2 – Team A.I. from Canada on pitch A6, 1 p.m.

As we were able to start with 2 robots, we had hopes of beating Team AI. Their forward robot was fast but erratic, and their goalie was relatively slow. Both use Arduino processors.
After a bit of preliminary tussling, we put the first goal in. We were still struggling to get traction on the new pitch carpets. Picture Bambi on a frozen pond – it was a bit like that. The slipperiness upset our steering as well. One wheel on one robot seemed particularly slippery, so Eric swapped it around with the back wheel to see if that helped. AI’s red forward robot had problems seeing the ball, so was taken off as a damaged robot, and in its absence we scored again. Their goalie was putting up a brave defence, but was unable to stop us putting a third goal in.
The red AI robot returned to the fray, showing distinctly random behaviour, and spent a while chasing our goalie up the pitch and finally wedging it into a corner and repeatedly driving into it. We felt that sort of behaviour was a bit unneccesary and put a 4th goal in, just to show it who was boss. So we were 4-0 up at the end of the first half.

We gave the wheels a quick wipe at half time with a damp cloth to see if that would help them gain any traction on the glassy carpet. I passed Eric a bottle of fizzy water to do this with. He opened it rather carelessly, and returned to the table looking as if he had peed himself, with 2 wiped robots. The wiping didn’t really help, but the damp trousers made me chuckle.
In the second half, we scored again in the fourth minute after some protracted tussling and jockeying for position, despite the slippery wheels. Shortly after that, we put another goal in. Then our attacker took the ball on what appeared to be a victory lap of the pitch, dribbling it along the wall up to the top corner by the yellow goal, then bringing it diagonally down the pitch to the opposite corner at the blue goal end. Meanwhile AI’s red robot had parked in our goal for a couple of minutes, and it only came out of there in order to tackle our goalie and pin it in a corner. No further goals were scored, and we ended up winning the match, scoring 6-0.

Day 3 – Match 3 – field A6 – against NR-I – 3 p.m.

This team had looked fairly challenging when we saw them playing earlier on, with strong and speedy robots. We were not expecting victory in this match. Eric was rather optimistically hoping we could hold them to a tie, but I felt that a loss by as few goals as possible would be rather more achievable.
The first 5 minutes of the first half were taken up with all 4 robots jostling and wrestling for possession of the ball, and the teams initially looked better matched than I had feared. As long as we kept the ball to the edges of the pitch, we could keep it out of their control, but once the ball was in the middle of the pitch it was theirs and it was hard to wrest control of it from them – the best we could do was hope to impede them so that they couldn’t get it to our goal. At one point there was a very hairy moment when they brought the ball fast down the pitch, and by a miracle one of our robots managed to position itself to stop them scoring.
5-4-3-2-1 lack of progress called every few seconds, as we managed to impede them again and yet again. Then, they broke past us and scored a goal.
For a moment after the kick-off after the goal, we were taking the ball towards their goal with a reasonable degree of confidence, which was our best attack on their goal yet, but they saved it and then brought the ball down to the other end of the pitch and scored again.
We took the ball up to their penalty area again and I thought we had them worried for a moment, but then the whistle blew for the end of the half and our hopes of clawing back a goal were dashed. The first half ended with the score 2-0 to NR-I.

For the second half, we were shooting towards the blue goal. NR-I put an early goal in, so the score is now 3-0. With such a fast and aggressive opponent, we’re doing really well to keep the score as low as it is.
After 5 more minutes of goal-less tussling, we were unable to prevent them putting another goal in. 4-0 to them now. Give them a free run at the ball down the middle of the pitch, and they are deadly. So long as we keep the ball close to the walls, they cannot get it – but if there is a multi-robot pile-up around the ball, nothing moves and lack of progress is called after 5 seconds which means the ball gets moved to one of the neutral spots which are closer to the middle of the pitch and therefore dangerous for us.
NR-I narrowly missed another couple of scoring opportunities – one goal went wide, and we managed to save one. With only 2 minutes left, one of NR-I’s robots went off damaged and they were down to one robot. After another tussle, lack of progress was called near our goal, and sadly the ball was put on the closest neutral spot which happened to be behind our goalie, which then reversed into the goal as it could not see the ball – so an own goal, bringing the score to 5-0 to them.
It was with a sense of relief that we greeted the final whistle. Losing 5-0 to a clearly superior, faster team is nothing to be ashamed of. The score for their match against Luwan Middle School was 10-9, so that we only let them get 5 goals in past us is greatly to our credit.

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.

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.