B-Human 2017 RoboCup world championship

"Set-up days" and penalty shot competition

We've been doing nothing but testing and programming over the "set-up days" since Tuesday before the competition finally officially opens on Thursday. Nevertheless, the Technical Challenge was held today, a secondary competition for the demonstration of certain abilities, "penalty shoot-outs". We were already very good at this in the past and we were successful once again today! In a small knock-out tournament, we won our penalty shoot-out against Wright Ocean (China) Nao-Team HTWK (Leipzig), TJArk (China) and NomadZ (Switzerland) and thus the Technical Challenge :-)

First day of the tournament – preliminary round success for B-Human

The first day of the 2017 RoboCup tournament is now over and has been exceptionally successful for B-Human. After our victory in the penalty competition on Wednesday, we were able to win in the first preliminary group on Thursday.
 
We won against UPennalizers (University of Pennsylvania, USA) with 7:0 and against MRL-SPL (Mechatronics Research Laboratory, Qazvin Azad University, Iran) with 5:0. Both opponents are experienced teams who have taken part in the RoboCup on many occasions already.

Second day of the tournament – qualification for the quarter final

The Team B-Human enjoyed successful robot football games once again on the second day of the tournament. The team won both games in the main competition. The opponents were the HULKs from TU Hamburg-Harburg and the Team UChile from the University of Chile, whom we defeated by a wide margin with 4:0 and 7:0, respectively. This means that we have also survived the second group stage and we are already qualified for the quarter final on Saturday. Now things are getting serious! Our opponents will be decided on Saturday morning in the match between UNSW Sidney and Luxembourg United.
 
In addition, we teamed up with the HULKs as Team B-HULKs in the mixed team competition. Here once again, we won both matches which means that we are already qualified for the final on Sunday. Our two opponents were Swift-Ark, consisting of the teams UNSW Sidney (University of New South Wales, Australia) and TJArk (Tongji University, China), whom we clearly defeated with 4:0, and DoBerMan, consisting of the Nao-Devils Dortmund (TU Dortmund) and Berlin United (Humboldt University of Berlin), who were defeated in an exciting match with a score of 2:1.

Third day of the tournament – entry into the semifinal and final

The last group match took place in the morning as part of the mixed team competition. The Team USA (comprising UT Austin Villa of the University of Texas at Austin and the UPennalizers from the University of Pennsylvania) were clearly defeated by the B-HULKs with a score of 5:0. The final in this competition against Team DoBerMan is scheduled for Sunday. We defeated this team once already in the group stage with a score of 2:1.
 
The only match in the main competition was the quarter final against the two times world champion UNSW Sidney from the University of New South Wales in Australia. This was the only team that was able to beat us in the past four years. Not today. The match had a clear outcome with a 5:0 for us.

Fourth day of the tournament – triple victory

While the outcome of the semifinal against the Nao-Devils of TU Dortmund was clearly in our favour at 4:0, a score that we had not anticipated beforehand, the robots were taken to their limits in the final against the Nao-Team HTWK from Leipzig in order to win. Our players were not able to kick the bay very far on the artificial turf laid out here which led to the target player spending much too much time waiting near the opposing goal while Leipzig's robots repeatedly dribbled in the direction of B-Human's goal creating good opportunities for themselves. Thanks to a strong defence and two successful goals the B-Human robots sealed the victory nevertheless.
 
We subsequently joined up again as the B-HULKs to play in the mixed team final against the Team DoBerMan. This was again an exceedingly exciting game that initially ended with 2:2 and was later decided in a penalty shoot-out. Thanks to a brilliant save in the last millisecond during DoBerMan's last shot, our goalie secured our victory.
 
Together with the Technical Challenge held a few days previously, B-Human has thus won once again won the triple of all three competitions in the Standard Platform League for the first time since 2013.