On Tuesday the 6th of June we arrived in Varazdin Croatia to participate in the European Robocup Junior competition on behalf of the Netherlands. We have worked hard to be able to reach the level to compete in international matches and we are excited to show the public what we have achieved so far!
The flight
The day begins early, we had to catch a flight at 7AM which meant that we had to regroup at 3:30 in the morning at the train station to travel to the airport and pass airport security in time. Everything went swiftly and we were in the air in no time. We also ended up meeting another Dutch robotics team in the same airplane which competes in another category of the European Robocupjunior competition. After one layover in Austria we landed at Zagreb airport, it is a small but modern airport. As we did not leave Europe, the passing went once again very smoothly. The flight was over but we still had to drive about an hour to Varazdin, the location of the competition.
We arrived at our accommodation in Varazdin to drop off our luggage after which we went to get lunch. After lunch, we had some time to rest before we had to check-in at the venue. Our accommodation was located in the hills of Varazdin which provided stunning views
Moving in
Registration and set up
We had access to a soccer table which we used for testing for a long time… But eventually it was time to go to check-in and set up at the competition. The venue was organized at Arena Varazdin which was arranged to fit the many different leagues. After registration, we continued to test and recalibrate our robots on the fields which was a challenge at first, but eventually worked out well. We calibrated the robot for line detection, goal detection and orientation.
Preparation for the matches
After setup, we went back to our accommodation to read the competition rules to make sure not be confronted with unfortunate surprises. As we had to be fully energized and focused for the matches the following day, we decided to sleep early. The next day we will be playing two matches in total against Croatia and Slovenia.
