Ok finally some time to spill some details of what’s been happening 
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.
And search the news tomorrow for articles, we’ve got Reuters people following our team closely.
it would be awesome to have teams from italy, australia and other countries in first!