So, RoboCup 2009 is over and ToBI (Team of Bielefeld) plus supporters are safely back in Bielefeld (having endured a 14 hour train-ride back, due to several delays for various reasons). Here is the final photo from the arena

Be sure to congratulate them, when you see them ;-)
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The final results are in and Team ToBI achieved 8th place! While not as high as we hoped, the team is proud (and tired ;-) and will now be heading off too celebrate :-)

We just took a photo of all @Home participants and their robots. Yours truly was drafted on the spot to be the "official" photographer. Oh well ;-) Enjoy!

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Phew. The PartyBot task was not... entirely successfull, really. Due to technical problems, 6 of 10 minutes were lost and in the remaining 4, not much could be done. Luckily for us, we can repeat it tomorrow, which is very important as we're only competing on 2 tasks, instead of 3. Also, many other teams didn't manage to do it very well, even without technical problems. → read more 

So, ToBI just completed the walk and talk, which is sort of the RoboCup version of the hometour. We did quite well in it but it was almost unspectactular after the challenges so far and so the team is already busying itself doing more fun stuff ;-) → read more 

For some comic relief, while we're waiting for the next @home task, witness the incredible state of the art (or lack of it) in soccer robots in this short video from the midsize preliminaries. → read more 

Team ToBI is 7th in round 1! So, round 2 (or, as Marc would have it: Semi-Finals ;-), here we come! Check the score sheet yourself:

As you can see, the two teams which yesterday were directly before ToBI didn't get any points in the "who is who" task, while we got quite a few. Our open challenge was also quite well received, scoring fourth highest overall in that task. → read more 

The Open Challenge is over and thus, the first round is now complete. Both tasks from today went quite well and I think we have really good chances to at least keep our place, maybe even improve it. So, I have high hopes to see Team ToBI in the second round, but lets keep our fingers crossed ;-) It was also quite interesting to see what the other teams are up to and  thus I added a few photos from the other teams, too. → read more 

ToBI just completed the "who is who" task very successfully: In it, the robot has to move around the appartment, find people and learn their names. At the end, people leave and the robot has to bid farewell to them at the exit. ToBI got two out of three persons (one person was blocked by someone standing in the way) and did the farewell successfully, too. → read more