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.
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