Robocup 2025 Salvador - Day 4
On the second competition day, the last games of the group stage and the round-of-16 games were played. Our day therefore started with the game against Boosted HTWK (Germany), which we clearly lost 0-14. Boosted HTWK demonstrated their strong superiority here, while we focused our efforts on defensive play with our robots and were thus able to prevent or delay a few goals. Incidentally, at the end of the tournament Boosted HTWK became world champion in our league (Kid Size Humanoid League) with a clear 11-0 against THMOS (China). The results of all games can be found here.
At the last two RoboCups in 2023 and 2024, our opponent in the round of 16 was the Hamburg Bit-Bots both times. At this RoboCup, we played the Bold Hearts (England) in the round of 16. Here we were clearly able to put more robots on the field, but alignment to the ball remained problematic. Our robots did move the ball, but not into the goal. As a result, this game went into extra time of two times 5 minutes because of the 0-0 score. We used this time to prepare ourselves and the robots for the subsequent penalty shootout. Here we needed two close attempts, in which our robot left the ball lying on the goal line. The third attempt was successful, though – robot Hans dribbled the ball quickly and directly into the goal. At that point our opposing team was able to field its robot for the penalty shootout, but fell over before ball contact in every attempt and could not score. So this round-of-16 game ended after more than an hour of playing time with a narrow 1-0 win, and for the first time in years we could look forward to a quarterfinal game.
Especially after the games ended that day, we noticed – the last few days had been exhausting. Nevertheless, we kept debugging, tightening screws and talking with other teams. Highlight of the day: near the hall there was a coconut stand selling fresh coconuts to drink. A tip for anyone planning a vacation in Brazil – buy out the fruit counter, it’s worth it. The exertions of the last few days also took their toll on our hardware, though: a battery showed a defect at the balancer connector after a game and was properly disposed of in cooperation with the organizers. Despite setbacks, defects and exhaustion, the day was a complete success – not least thanks to our hard-fought round-of-16 win and the qualification for the quarterfinal, where we face team THMOS tomorrow.
