Robocup Competiton 2003 - Padua, Italy

[patrickrd]

Tomorrow morning, I will be leaving to compete in the Robocup Small Size league in Padua, Italy. As one of only a few teams representing the United States (there are also teams from Ohio State and Carnegie Mellon), I hope to bring back the small size league champion cup! Cornell University has won the competition three of the past four years, defeating teams from all over the world. I would also like to point out that several members of our team were former FIRST team members in high school and very influential towards our successes! I will make every effort to post updates how the Cornell team is doing daily between July 3 and July 9.

For those interested, Robocup is an organization who's goal is to build a set of robots that can compete against and win against the World Cup soccer champions by the year 2050. At present, Robocup has several leagues set up to work towards this goal, the small-sized league being one of them. In the small sized league, five robots compete autonomously (no human control) against another team on a field slightly larger than a ping pong table.

In the four years Cornell has been involved, we have set the standard for mechanical design. In 2000, Cornell introduced an omni-directional drive system, allowing the robots to accelerate in any direction at any time, with any rotational velocity. Further, a dribbling system was introduced in 2001 that allows the robots to place a backspin on the ball, such that the ball is always accelerating towards the robot, regardless how the robot is traveling. Both innovations have set the standard, and today most every team has attempted to adapt the same technology.

Below you can find a list of links of interest relating to the competition, and a photo taken today of our eight 2003 robots before being packed.

Robocup 2003 Competition Site (http://www.robocup2003.org/Default.jsp)
Cornell's Robocup Site (http://robocup.mae.cornell.edu/)
Cornell Robocup Media Archive (http://robocup.mae.cornell.edu/RoboCup_Media_Archive.html)

[kristen]

Good luck, Patrick and everyone else from Cornell :D

I think I heard something about this competition last year in tech class

[tine_204_639]

Best of luck in Italy - learn a lot of Italian and teach the robots to speak it! (: Big Red will dominate - bring home the gold. And have fun!

[patrickrd]

Originally posted by tine_204_639
Best of luck in Italy - learn a lot of Italian and teach the robots to speak it! (: Big Red will dominate - bring home the gold. And have fun!

Thanks for the good luck wishes. Actually, we've installed audio speakers and a small sound card on board. We can program to say whatever we'd like whenever we'd like them to :D

- Patrick

[Andy Baker]

Patrick,

Good luck. We'll all be pullin' for you here in the States.

That picture shows quite a crew of 'bots. If I am seeing things correctly, they each have a 4-wheel omni-directional drive base, kinda like the "Kiwi" drive base, but with 4 wheels. Is that right?

I remember some of the concept drawings that you did a couple of years ago... it is great to see that your concepts made it to reality.

Great job!!!!

Andy B.

[Yan Wang]

We already chatted Pat... so just go have fun and EAT PIZZA TILL YOU DROP!!!

[patrickrd]

Yesterday we arrived safely and on time in Venice after a connection in Zurich. Although we all survived the trip, only two of sixteen pieces of luggage arrived! Fortunately, we woke up this morning to find that all luggage (including all the robotics equipment) had arrived at our hotel.

Today (the 2nd), we arrived at the competition site. It is amazing! So many teams from all over the world, and many different types of robots in all the different Robocup leagues. About half of the small size teams have arrived, we are working now to unpack and set up our vision & computer systems.

The next two days (3rd and 4th) will also setup days, with competition beginning the fifth.

Got to run for now, my team is leaving without me for lunch :)

- Patrick

[Yan Wang]

Upload pictures :)

[patrickrd]

Today is day two of three setup days. Yesterday we completed setting up our cameras on top of the playing field, in addition to setting up all our computers and wireless system. I've attached a photo of three of the four small size playing field where we compete. Last night we had some problems with our local network, and we have had to send some emails to people back home to get the proper passwords and permissions to do everything we need to do. Fortunately, this is not an urgent problem as all major systems are functional as is. We ran one of our robots around last night on joystick control, to check that wireless is functional, and it performed flawlessly.

For me, the highlight of yesterday was when we took out our robots for other teams to look at, and looking at all the other team's robots. Being returning champions, there is a lot of interest to see what changes we have made and how our new robots look. Unfortunately, many teams do not have much mechanical engineering involvement, thus are unable to build high performance bots and match our physical capabilities. In fact, one team of the 24 small size teams is constructed from legos. On the other hand, most other teams have far more advanced artificial intelligence capabilities than our team, and many are mechanically very similar. Hopefully, the mechanical advantages and control advantages of our robots will be great enough to outperform all other teams. I spent much of yesterday talking to other teams about our designs, problems, and solutions.

Today, the CS guys are working hard to make improvements to the artificial intelligence. In particular, they are making improvements to our offensive roles. Also, there has been some trouble with our vision system. The lighting is in fact so bright here that our black robot hats do not appear black to the camera. A couple team members are out at local stores looking for a very dark black material that will not reflect light back to the camera. Hopefully, we will be ready to play a scrimmage game against our 2002 robots or against another willing team this afternoon. Mechanically, I had to replace a couple gears on one of our robots this morning, which was a nice change of pace because I didn't have much work to do at all yesterday. I am sure that as we begin to use the robots more and more (and compete starting this weekend) that we will have more maintenance to do on the robots.

Aside from the robotics competition, the food in Italy is great! The pizza is without a doubt much better than in the United States. Also, the ice cream here is AMAZING. On the other hand, the hotels here are much more expensive and much smaller. I have had some difficulty as of yet finding restaurants with anything but pizza, but I am sure I will be able to find some other food soon enough. I've been told that real Italian food, however, is much further south in Italy. I will have an opportunity to go south after the competition to demonstrate our robots for an arts festival in Spoleto, hopefully I will have time to travel over to Rome for one day.

- Patrick

[BobAnnDingle]

Hi, Pat. Glad to hear everything is going well so far. It's fun reading the postings here each day. Don't each too much pizza! Good luck this weekend. Ciao. Love Mom & Dad.

[Yan Wang]

Yeah, looking at the robot this year and previous years, Cornell has always had the upper hand in mechanical advantage. I hope you guys do well. I checked out the website for Padua and Robocup.org but I didn't see any webcasts. Are there going to be any of the competition?

Oh yeah, and that looking for black material reminds me of NYC regional in 2002 when we had to get pain for the gripper arms :) That was painful.

Good luck.

[PS, Independence Day here if you've already forgotten... go set off some fireworks, Pat.]

[patrickrd]

Hi everyone,

Sorry for the lack of updates over the past couple days, things have been busy. Here is a summary of how things have gone:

Thursday 03 Jul:
Thursday was a fairly uneventful day for me. There were no major mechanical problems, and the artificial intelligence team was busy at work on the AI. The highlight was in the evening when we played a 3vs3 scrimmage game against our old robots. A very large croud gathered around us, eager to see how we fared against our old world champion bots. The 2003 easily prevailed.

Friday 04 Jul:
Independence day turned out to be extremely busy for me. I woke up before 7am, and headed to the competition site. During the morning, I prepared all the robots for competition, and all passed the checklists. The CS guys spent much of the morning and afternoon preparing for a passing competition later in the evening. The dribblers were tested far more extensively than ever before, and at the end I realized that the dribblers would need some major work. Nevertheless, we won the passing competition with 10 successful passes. After that small event, Ken and I set to work at working on the dribblers. The problem was that many of the plastic bevel gears were stripping... A result of improper alignment and high torque. To fix the problem, we decided to replace the gears attached to the motor shafts with brass gears, replace any bad plastic gears, and reassemble with proper meshing. At first the procedure worked fine, until we realized that our method of securing the bevel gears to motor shafts was not strong enough. The problem turned out to be very difficult to solve, and we tried about five different things before Len came up with an idea that worked very well. By about 2:00am this morning (the 5th), we completed the gear replacements and now have a very robust dribbling system. Hopefully, all our work on the dribbling system will ultimately prevent disasters that could have arisen. After we finished, the AI team was ready to play a 5vs5 scrimmage against our 2002 robots. This was necessary to test our complete system before our first official game at 9am on the 5th (today). The scrimmage went OK in our opinion. There were many improvements we saw, but still several holes in our strategy needing to be patched. After the scrimmage, the entire mechanical team (Ken, Len, Dave, and I) spent the early hours of the morning pregaming the robots for competition. After all was done, we headed home about 4:30am

Sat 05 Jul (today):
I woke up this morning at about 7:15, showered, and headed immediately to the competition site without breakfast. Even though the robots were verified to be 100% last night, I wanted to be sure everything went smoothly. Our first game was at 9am this morning against B-SMART, a team from Germany. There was absolutely no trouble preparing for the game, and we started right on time. Our opponents had 3 immoble robots. Playing with our gains way down to prevent risk of failure, we easily cruised to a 10-0 victory.

Game 1:
Big Red 10, B-SMART 0

Our next game is at 6pm this evening, again against a team that should not pose a big challenge. We are currently competing in the first round-robin stage, where we each compete against most every other team in our 6-team division. The best 3 in each division advance to the next round, which is a 3-team round robin, where the winners advance to elimination matches. The robots look in very good shape, and AI is busy improving the strategy.


Over the past couple days I have learned some more about Italian culture. Pizza is everywhere (at least in Padova). Whenever I go to a restaurant, most everyone is eating a pizza. Some restaurants do not serve anything but pizza! I have become very proficient at ordering pizza, pepperoni & mushroom being my favorite: "Vorrei diavola con funghi." I also am becoming proficient at the Italian number system, and have found that stores hate when you don't have exact change. We have also felt unwelcome at a couple places, a sign that there is some anti-american sentiment in Northern Italy. But for the most part, people are courtious and friendly.

That's it for now, I will try to post another update after this evening's game but I might opt for sleep instead, which I have been lacking lately :)

- Patrick

[patrickrd]

At 6pm we had our second game of the day, this time against Plasma-Z of Thailand. The game began on time, but we were immediately forced to use a time out because our team member who manages full autonomy (which handles communication with the referee) was not present to get the autonomy working properly. Fortunately, we were able to resolve the problem before our maximum 10 minutes expired and begin the game.

Once the game began, we were able to score on virtually every possesion, and the opponent was unable to gain possesion of the ball for more than a second or two. After we scored five very quick goals, Plasma-Z had computer trouble, and was forced to take a time out. Plasma-Z then immediately forfeited and we won the game by forfeit, 10-0.

Game 2:
Big Red 10, Plasma-Z 0

Mechanically, we had zero major failures during both games. However, one of the horizontal dribbling motors is showing signs that it will soon fail and we will be replacing it tonight.

Ciao - Patrick

[patrickrd]

Last night I got a good 10+ hours of sleep, so am feeling much better rested. On to today's news, which is only a brief update since many people on our team are trying to get on the laptops to use internet.

At 11am this morning we had our third game. Our opponents today were the Canuks from Canada. We began our game at half speed (a cautionary measure against slow opponents), and scored a fairly quick goal. However, the beginning minutes were very shaky. Our robots did not seem to be moving very smoothly or moving how our AI should command them to. For example, our robot would have possesion of the ball and a clear path to advance upfield, but would sit dribbling the ball and do nothing for a few seconds before deciding to move. Further, a bizarre play off a free kick nearly gave up a goal to the Canuks. During a quick timeout, the AI team disabled a mode they were experimenting with, and we upped our gains to full speed (although we have even a faster "turbo" speed we can use in the future). After the swithes, our robots worked very well. Although the performance of the Canuks was the best we have competed against yet, it was still not among the competition's best, and we again cruised to a 10-0 victory. This third victory guarantees that we advance to the second round of competition, with at least 2nd seed in our new round robin group. I should mention, since we are winning by 10 goals often, that the rules state the game ends early after a 10 point advantage, and that is why all our scores are by 10.

Game 3:
Big Red 10, Canuks 0

Our next game is not until tomorrow at six pm, thus there is much time to prepare for our next opponent. We will need it! Tomorrow we play the last team we have not yet played in our round robin division, the RoboRoos from Australia. The RoboRoos have also cruised to 10-0 victories against the same three opponents, and we consider them to be among the best teams at the competition. Although they are not quite as fast as us, they have a slightly more powerful kick and can also dribble the ball reasonably well. Their AI appears to be very similar to ours, but we never know what kind of plays they will try against us. It should be a very good test of our system, and our first opportunity to get a good look at how good we are this year. Best case, our system works great and we can outperform and outmaneuver them, and have another strong win. On the other hand, if we have holes in our strategy that we haven't anticipated, and we are not able to get around their strong defense, we could be defeated by any margin. A loss would be embarassing and disappointing, but on the plus side, we would learn exactly what our holes are and we would have time to fix them. Learning about them in the second round or elimination matches would be much worse. In any case, I'm optimistic, but of course we have to respect and expect the very best of each and every opponent.

And last night I again had pizza, since we were at a restaurant that had nothing but pizza. They kept on screwing up orders, but the place was great. They kept on bringing out all sorts of appetizers. We all only finished about half of the food, and were completely stuffed. And then of course they served excellent iced cream for desert. And then I slept from 10pm until about 8:30 this morning. :D

Ok, that's it for my update, which I guess was longer than I was planning. Hopefully Dave is not too upset for me using his computer for too long. I put on a picture of the restaurant last night... sorry I'm not in it, I have some of me on Dave's camera but haven't gotten copies of them yet.

- Patrick

[patrickrd]

Game 5:
RoboRoos 4, Big Red 0

Quick update, I will fill in the details when time permits. At 6pm this evening we played our last game of the round robin, and were soundly defeated by the RoboRoos from Australia. There were many problems with our robots, and the RoboRoos quite frankly were incredibly solid in all areas of play. We have diagnosed problems and are currently working to correct this problem before our games tomorrow ;)

After first round robin:
We advance to 2nd round with a total of 12 teams. There will be four round robin groups, 3 teams in each group. We will be playing the Lucky Stars from Singapore and the TPots from Singapore. The 4 winners will advance to the elimination matches.

[Yan Wang]

Yo... let Steve fly over in some army carrier with some RPGs and M16s and I think you'll get those wins. ;)

Tough loss... hope you guys get those bugs fixed. I don't expect you to sleep till you do.

[Yan Wang]

OMG speak of the devil... Steve just got online for a while... interesting things happening.

[patrickrd]

Quick update, sorry for the brief update but will post details later.

Game 5 (round 2 game 1):
Big Red 1, TPots 0

Game 6 (round 2 game 2):
Big Red 9, Lucky Stars 1

** Big Red is one of four teams to advance to elimination matches. We will face the FU Fighters of Germany at 11:30am tomorrow.

[Yan Wang]

That's awesome.

[BobAnnDingle]

Hey pat, its Molly. Hows Italy treatin ya? are you fluent in Italian yet? Well, eat a lot of pizza and win a few competitions too! :] < that kinda looks like one of your robots. haha.. good luck

[patrickrd]

Ok finally some time to spill some details of what's been happening :D I'll start with yesterday (Monday the 7th):

Yesterday we had a difficult day. As posted, we lost our game against the RoboRoos of Australia by a score of 4-0. We had all sorts of problems during that game. There were two major problems that we noticed: Dribbling and vision. The dribbling system seemed to be completely ineffective. Since our game relied on dribbling, we basically were unable to gain possession of the ball. The other problem was vision. At times, our vision system would be unable to determine where the ball or one of the robots is on the field. When this happens, the robots have no idea where to go, and quickly the opponent is able to score.

To the Australians' credit, their play was outstanding. I was competely impressed on how flawless their play seemed. It was especially impressive that they beat us, considering we can accelerate much faster.

Today, each remaining team played one game against each of the other two teams in their round robin groups. We first played the TPots of singapore at 2pm, who we considered to be the much less difficult team to beat in our group.

Before our games today, the other two teams in our new round robin group (Lucky Star and TPots) played each other. We were preparing for our game at the time and thus did not watch, but we know Lucky Star defeated TPots 10-0.

Our 2pm TPots game turned out to be a tense, bizarre game. For most of the game, the ball would be in a corner of the field, and the TPots would be attempting to jam the ball in between our goalie and the goalpost. This was not effective for two reasons. First, our robot was not giving enough room for the ball to go through. Second, if they touch our goalie, it is a free kick back in the corner for us. They kept on hitting our goalie, thus we kept on getting free kicks. At the time, our free kick algorithm simply kicked the ball out of bounds, thus the TPots would gain possession back, still in a corner of the field. The net result is a game stuck in the same kind of plays over and over. Luckily for us, we managed to score a goal early in the first half, and won the game.

After our lucky win versus the TPots, we were in the dire position of playing Lucky Star at 6pm. As some background, Lucky Star had won all five of its games without giving up a goal. Personally, I considered Lucky Star to be one of the most difficult teams to beat (if not the most difficult) at the competition. Most of our team were prepared to take the loss and be knocked out of the competition before elimination matches. However, I noticed things beginning to look up fifteen minutes before the game began. Our robots were all completely ready, on the playing field, and already tested with AI. In previous games, we always had problems we were scrambling to fix before the game. We were ready, and felt our robots were ready for the challenge -- and it would be one. Lucky Star has a great mechanical design, the quickest robots we have played yet, and very good strategy.

The first two minutes of the game went back and forth from one side of the field to the other. After a minute or so, I noticed that our defense was very very strong... Lucky Star was unable to get any open shots on us. This was definately a good sign. Further, our robots were dribbling the ball, and doing it very well. It was clear whatever dribbling problems we had against the RoboRoos were gone. We were easily able to gain possesion at will, and move upfield quickly and effectively.

About 2.5 minutes into play, we were called a penalty for having two defenders in the goal kick, which gives a direct free kick at the goal to the opponent, with only our goalie allowed to attempt to stop it. Typically, this results in a goal. Lucky Star shot at one of our corners, but the goalie was able to read the motion correctly and "dive" left to block the shot. A moral victory for Big Red.

The blocked penalty shot definately gave our robots a bit of confidence, as we completely dominated the game from that point forward. In the first half, we scored four consecutive goals by setting picks, advancing upfield, and strafing around opponents until we had an open shot. Our powerful kick was easily able to bang the ball through any opening for a goal. At the end of the half, however, Big Red was again called for two defenders in the goalbox. This time, Lucky Star scored on the penalty kick, and the half ended with a score of 4-1.

In the second half (after halftime maintenence) our robots were even more impressive. Using the same strategies, the robots scored five more goals, in addition to a spectacular goal that we scored just after time expired. Big Red 9, Lucky Stars 1.

We now advance to the elimination matches along with the FU Fighters (Germany), RoboRoos (Australia), and CMDragons (Carnegie Mellon, PA, USA). We play the FU Fighters tomorrow morning at 11:30, who are equally fast as ourselves, though have much less effective dribblers. On the other hand, the FU Fighters have spectacular strategy and ball control, so it should be a very good match. On a historical note, we have met the FU Fighters in the elimination matches each and every year in Big Red's history. Should we win, we go on to play the winner of the RoboRoos-CMDragons game. We would love to play either team, since Carnegie Mellon is our local rival, and we lost to the RoboRoos yesterday (and would love to try again). Should we lose, we would play a consolation match against the loser of CM-RoboRoos.

Mechanically, the robots are ready to go for tomorrows game. There was very very little damage incurred during today's game. I'll be heading back to the hotel soon to get some sleep before tomorrow's games.

That's it for now. Buona notte.

[patrickrd]

We came in early today to prep the robots for our 11:30am game versus the FU Fighters of Germany. Before our game, the other semifinal match (Carnegie Mellon vs. RoboRoos) took place. The RoboRoos, who beat us in the first round robin, easily defeated Carnegie Mellon 10-0.

Our game was incredibly even matched and tense. The FU Fighters were very fast, and were able to keep up with our robots. Like our last game, we were called for two defenders in the goalbox and the FU Fighters had a penalty kick. Fortunately, they missed. Shortly after, we scored a very slick goal to take the advantage. The game went back and forth, but we never fell behind. 1-0. 1-1. 2-1. 2-2. 3-2. 3-3. 4-3. 4-4. Two of the four goals scored against us were on penalty kicks for two defenders in the goalbox, a problem that has plagued us all competition. At the end of regulation, the score was 4-4. Play continued with two 5-minute sudden-death overtime periods. The first overtime period went without a goal scored. In the second overtime period, however, one of our robots advanced up field, strafed around looking for a shot, found the shot, and nailed it in. Big Red advances to the finals :D

Game 7 (Semifinals):
Big Red 5, FU Fighters 4

We advance to the finals versus the RoboRoos at 3:30pm. Robots are prepped and ready. Hopefully, we have improved our system enough to win versus the RoboRoos since our loss over the weekend.

That's it for now. Check back later for the result of our championship match :) And search the news tomorrow for articles, we've got Reuters people following our team closely.

[patrickrd]

To make a long story short:

Big Red 1, RoboRoos 0 (overtime)

The game was incredibly close. Amazing play by both teams. :D

History: We won our 4th robocup championship in the 5 years our team has existed, only loss in 2001.

That's it, see you all back in the States!

[Andy Baker]

Congrats to Patrick and the rest of the Cornell team! This is awesome!

I bet that overtime match was exciting... I wonder if Patrick and his teammates ran around the room, slid on the floor and took off their shirts.

Goooooooooaaaal!

Andy B.

[robomama]

patrick,

i have really enjoyed your updates on the competition. sounds like you are having a great time. italy....first....hmmm. i hope you have mentioned us ;-) it would be awesome to have teams from italy, australia and other countries in first!

good luck in the finals. i know y'all can bring it home!

keep us updated.

bonnie
aol im- bjl75

[robomama]

well now that looks dumb...i started that reply when i first got to work this morning and by the time i got back to it THEY WON!

CONGRATS.
b

[yimjh]

Awesome job all you guys in italy! Thanks for the updates, Patrick. Another victory will just make our job that much harder next year ;)

-jeremy

[Andrew Rudolph]

Big congrats to you on your win, sounds like an awesome competition, is there videos anywhere?

[Yan Wang]

Congrats on the win....

If I don't get into a dream school like MIT or Stanford, I'll probably be going to my *backup* of Cornell and doing robocup for the 4 years :)

[David Hoff]

Congratulations on your 4th championship in 5 years and thanks for keeping us updated on the events.

[Joe Ross]

Were you trying to hide in this picture (http://www.robocup.org/games/03Padova/images/P1010055.JPG)? ;)

Anyway, congratulations, and welcome back to the states :)

[patrickrd]

Hey everyone,

Thanks for all the messages! I'm finishing my brief tour of Italy up (currently at my last stop of Venice) today and have a long travel day tomorrow all the way back to Ithaca.

Now that I have a little time and need a short break from touring the city (and am only paying 0.13 euro per minute at this internet cafe :eek: ) I'll post a description of our last game.

Our championship match against the Euro was just like our first against the RoboRoos, only our robots were performing much better due to changes we had made over the prior few days. Both defenses (ours and the australians) were supurb. Due to this, neither team was able to score in the first half. Since the score was still 0-0 at the half, our team opted to flip some dipswitches on all our robots that we had only used once prior in the competition. This put our robots in "turbo mode" and increased our acceleration and max velocity by up to 50%, at the risk of overheating and burning out motors.

Fortunately, we did not burn out any motors. However, we were still unable to penetrate the RoboRoos defense, even with the extra speed. To make matters worse, we received a yellow card for too much hard contact, which was a result of turbo mode. Just a minute or two in the second half, we received a second yellow card for the same reason, resulting in a red card. We were then forced to remove a robot from the field for the rest of the game (including the eventual overtime). Even with one robot down, we had no trouble holding the score at 0-0, and forced overtime.

Overtime began with the same type of play, and we were all very very tense about what would happen. Personally, I was very worried that we would be called for two defenders in the goalbox, which would have resulted in a penalty kick at our goal. Fortunately, as I was pondering our situation, one of our robots named Spartacus gained possession of the ball in the RoboRoos left corner. Spartacus strafed accross the field, clearly taking advantage of turbo mode, and shot the ball up in the air into the right top corner of the goal :D And just like that, we won the game and the championship. Ironically, Spartacus was the robot that gave us the most trouble all year, and our robots were not designed to "chip kick" (kick up into the air). So another mechanical failure of Spartacus worked to our advantage (or at least looked pretty cool) in scoring the goal.

[patrickrd]

I have videos of all our matches, photos, and more. I will try and get these all up on the internet later this week when I am back in New York.

Patrick :)