Saturday September 2nd There are only four teams left in the tournament now. They are LRP, Rome, CMU and UNSW. Of these, LRP and CMU have had two and a half years experience with the robots, UNSW has had one and a half, and Rome has had a half. So there is a good spread of experience among the teams, and it is a credit to Rome's performance that they have progressed to the semi-finals with competition from other more experienced teams. The first semi final was played by Rome and LRP. Both teams were quite evenly matched. The French were able to move faster, as they were using their motions from last year, and the Italians were using the Sony walk - similar to the match-up of 1999 final. Play was very even, with both teams having several opportunities to score. These were either defended by the keepers, or wasted when a striker knocked the ball the wrong way. Play often moved up and down the field, as one team gained the upper hand, only to have the other team snatch the advantage. One goal was scored during the match, by the team from LRP. They went through to the finals, and Rome will have a second chance tomorrow in the 3rd place playoff. The second semi was between UNSW and CMU, in a rematch of the second semi final from 1999. CMU are another team that are able to push the ball right down to the other end from the kickoff, but after the Humboldt quarter final, the UNSW team were prepared with strategies to combat this, and Darren had stayed up late the previous night making the necessary mods to his goalie. In pre match testing, Claude was worried that the strategy may misfire, but was eventually persuaded that it should be allowed to stay. CMU kicked off, but the directed their kick straight at the UNSW defenders, and it bounced back into the middle of the field. The UNSW attackers were able to bring the ball forwards around the CMU team, and scored the first goal after 25 seconds of play. Things looked bleak for CMU. Often their opening kick was too powerful, and rolled back from the corners into the middle of the field. This provided the UNSW attackers with ample opportunities to move the ball down the CMU end and pressure their keeper. The defence was not tight in the first half, and UNSW were able to quickly get the goals in, running away to an 8-0 lead just before the end of the first half. After the next CMU kickoff, the ball rolled across the face of the goal, and sat on the penalty line. One of their attackers reached it and nudged it along the line, where it bounced off an incoming UNSW defender and rolled in front of the goal. The UNSW goalie chased it, but unfortunately scored an own goal. This is the only goal conceded by UNSW so far in the tournament. UNSW scored again in the final seconds of the first half to bring the score to 9-1. CMU defended much more strongly in the second half, as they seemed to able to see the ball better. The CMU goalie was able to make some great saves. UNSW were only able to score three more goals, to bring the final score to 12-1. We were in the final again! The Robocup Challenge was also held today. The Challenge is a soccer-skills competition, in which one or two robots must perform a certain task in the shortest time to win. Check out the page for a description of the three challenges and the results of them. After being eliminated from the round-robin part of the tournament, the Osaka team threw themselves into the Challenge, determined to do well. Osaka came second to UNSW in the first two Challenges. In the second Challenge, in which a robot had to pass over the center line to another robot, UPenn managed to use sound to communicate between the robots. After the first one kicked the ball over the line, it gave a beep, and the second robot sprang to life. Everyone was very impressed by this. Tonight was also Night. This is a gathering of Legged League people with people from Sony. It tries to capture the culture of the host country - last year in Stockholm there was a traditional smorgasboard. This year we had chicken, steak and sausages with potatoes and salad for dinner, and lamingtons and pavlovas for dessert. With the free drinks on offer, several people - members of various teams as well as Sony people :) - got rather schlammed, and afterwards dispersed to the nightclubs of Melbourne. However, back in the responsible UNSW camp, Bernhard had an early night. Son and Darren stayed up late trying to diagnose an obscure localisation problem that had manifested itself in the second half of the CMU game. After much experimentation, it was reproduced and fixed - some spurious yellow was being detected down the blue end of the field, and this occasionally mixed with pink to form a yellow beacon. Naturally this threw the localisation for a bit. By 4am the problem was fixed.

[previous day]   [next day]