… and first results are online. In the Humanoid Kid-Size League, the first round robin phase is accomplished, and the regarding rankings are final. But there is also coverage from Teen-Size, RoboCup@Home and the opening ceremony.

In the kid-size league, the results show that German Teams (NimbRo, Darmstadt Dribblers, FUmanoid) dominate at this time. Each of the named are also winner of their round robin group of the first phase (you can find pictures from the NimbRo-game below). All results of this League so far are presented at my Robocup 2009, Graz page. We'll have a comprehensive look at the teen-size tomorrow, once their round robin phase is finished.

Additionally, I visited our “Homies” (our RoboCup@Home-Team) today, which was pretty interesting: I even was given the opportunity to watch some competitions among the @Home-League. As for the NimbRo-Team, the two of our robots entered the Arena at the same time. The former Teen-Size Robot Robotinho swaggered about his former lifes as soccer player and cellist conductor, and about his new lifeInteresting as Home Robot. Moreover, he introduced his sister Dynamaid (in the pictures, red with yellow arms) to the grateful audience, which is able to grab and transport objects (like cracker containers) with claws. Robotinho showed several gestures and facial expressions to clarify his points. Later, a follow-me task was performed with the robots, but to present final comments about this, one has to wait how the task jury awards scores to the teams: For example, rumors were caused by the walkers (the persons the robots had to follow) to try to squeeze two robots through a narrow passage of about 1 meter width, which they (of course) didn't get through. This “failure” then caused several disadvantages for the robots. Needless to say, that one robot is about 70 centimetres wide .

Overall, the niveau the RoboCup participating teams are working on, is quite different among all teams. For instance, in Kid-Size, the league is roughly divided into three groups of teams: Those playing at a professional level (which does not imply that everything is working), those capable of playing fairly but encounter severe problems during games, and those who almost can't do anything (walking, self localization, ball recognition …).

Last but not least: I attended the RoboCup opening ceremony today (some pictures below). A nice idea, which could be established further. As a special, an autonomous car was presented, which did't seem to be too autonomous: Later, I heard a message through the loud speakers “The driver of the autonomous car may …” which was worth a laugh.