On wednesday june the 7th the European Robocupjunior officially kicked off, we experienced the opening ceremony and played our first two matches against Croatia and Slovenia.
Today, we decided to wake up early in the morning. We wanted to fully maximize our setup time to be optimally prepared for our upcoming matches. The day started once again with calibrating our camera, line detection sensors and orientation sensors. This unexpectedly took a lot of time, but because we were present well before our first match this did not affect our plans. We had enough time to test the robot and were ready for our first match!
Match One: Croatia
We were quite nervous for our first match. Although the calibration and testing phase went well, we still did not know what to expect. The beginning of each match in the Robocup Junior lightweight 2 versus 2 soccer division always starts with 5 minutes of time to calibrate the robots once again. The robot also needs to be inspected by the referees to make sure it meets the competition rules. After this, a coin toss is done between the team captains. The winner may choose either the side they want to start or starting with the kickoff. The match started off great, our robots performed really well. We played with one defender which guards the goals and one attacker that tries to score. Our opponent played with two attackers but fortunately our defender was able to defend against both of them at the same time. The match ended in a 8-3 win for Roboticus!
After the match we went for a small lunch break to energize up and relax for a moment. At the venue, there was a food hall with typical Croatian food to enjoy! We were happy to try Croatian food.
Match Two: Slovenia
For the second match we once again took our time to calibrate and test the robots, however this time our attacking robot did not work as well as in our first match. This did worry us because we did not immediately know the problem. The first half ended 1-1 this was mainly because of the consistency of our defender. The second half went a bit better but still not like our first match. It was a really intense match because the scores were very close, fortunately the match ended in 4-3 in our favor and our second win of the day became a reality!
After the match we went for dinner after which we went back home to evaluate and rest for the next match day!
