Northern Bites Blog

Just announced today: The GermanOpen 2007 will be held in Hannover over April 16-21. Apparently the event will be held in ‘the world’s largest industrial fair’. That’s pretty cool. The event will be hosting lots of other leagues beyond our own, and I found this little note particularly interesting:

The RoboCupJunior competition in Hannover is restricted to German teams. They have to qualify for participation in the RoboCup German Open in regional events held in Magdeburg (February, 23rd-25th) and Vöhringen (March, 2nd-4th). Details and a call for participation for these qualifying events will be issued separately.

They are serious about their RoboCupJunior in Germany. And I’m not a hater at all–RoboCupJunior was the sole reason I stayed sane throughout the entire RoboCup 2006. Especially the Dancing.

UPDATE::link above re-linked to English version, linked in the Links section to your right as well.

…but hardly operational.  Anyways, for a website that was promised on August 1, it’s good to see there’s finally something. Looks like the humanoid will be the center of fanfare for this year–I don’t blame them.  The humanoid league looks stronger each year.

RoboCup 2007 ATLANTA

In the second round of pool play, Bowdoin went 1-2 winning against TJ-Ark but losing to UPENN 0-3 and to the Hellhounds 0-7.  The UPENN game was mostly up for grabs and we missed a few golden oppurtunities.  We actually held the Hellhounds and gave them a much better game then in the U.S. Open just a few months ago.

We end RoboCup without an official ranking but clearly in the Top 12.  In the process, we’ve had two big wins, scored five goals in one game, made it into the second round of pool play, and finished top 12 in the world in our first year internationally–all while using (nearly) entirely our own code base in the process.

Ro-bots!!

Northern Bites 5 – TJ-Ark 1.  Our dogs, with a faster gait and improved trap, overcame their positioning difficulties to score some solid goals in their first game in the second round pool play games.

UPENN game at 13:30, Microsoft Hellhounds at 15:30.

Northern Bites escapes from the first round of pool play in Germany after a 1-0 victory against Spelman College in a cross-over match. We are now in the top 16 teams in the world, with a record of 1-1-1.
We were also graced by a visit from the famous comedian Drew Carey, who stayed to watch our match. He is in Germany to report the world cup and related happenings for the Travel Channel.
Earlier today we lost 0-8 to last years’ second place team, the Australian NUbots.

Yesterday here in Bremen, Germany, the Northern Bites tied the higher ranked Dutch Aibo Team 1-1 in our first Pool Play game here at the RoboCup World Championships. Going down after a goal in the first half, Northern Bites scores within 30 seconds of the end of the game in the second, tying the Dutch and putting us into position to finish second in our Pool!

Robot Soccer Dogs Headed To World Championships [WMTW.com]

Though they were only at our event for a short time, it was great to see a state TV channel come to our scrimmage. Plus–this article included a follow-up to our competition in Atlanta! Rock on, WMTW.

Here are the scores as I received them 1000 miles away:

Microsoft Hellhounds 6 – Northern Bites 0
UT Austin Villa 5 – Northern Bites 0
Northern Bites 2 – Brown Demonstra Dogs 0
Northern Bites 2 – Brown Pound 1

Game replay, footage, more in-depth analysis later this week. For now, we allow our non-robotic lives to take over for a while.

6:53 PM: So we’ve made it–dogs and laptops and all–to Boston Logan Airport to wait for three hours because of delays in Atlanta. Apparently, there was a suspicious package found in Atlanta, to which the authorities responded to with undoubtedly some sort of robot. I only hope that it was kind enough to play a rough form of soccer after its official business was finished.

Next Day… Ok that didn’t really work out–but we’re at the venue now-picture soon!

Upgraded to WordPress 2.0.2. Fixed odd font size issue. Atlanta Three (!) Days away.