Berlin United – FUmanoids

Visiting the Reichstag

On May 15, 2013, the FUmanoids were part of the second Politican LAN in the Reichstag. Taking our robots Konrad, Grace and Alan (Ada had to stay home), as well as the autonomous model car of the Berlin United – Racing Team and the DARwIn-robot of the Berlin United @home team, we arrived at the Reichstag at 2pm and quickly set up, directly above the plenary hall.

On three monitors we showed videos of our research group‘s projects, namely the mentioned robotic projects as well as a video of our autonomous car (AutoNOMOS Labs). For our robots we brought green carpet along, however in their enthusiasm they did not really stay on it for that long but walked all over the floor. As usual, everybody wanted to see the robots, including Philipp Rösler, vice chancellor and minister of economics and technology was very interested and we talked about robot soccer and cars.

In general there were unfortunately not that many people at the event. Especially during and regrettably after the talks and discussions, not much was going on at the exhibitions. But we used this opportunity to continue with our robots’ training.

Overall, it was a very exciting day. We hope to have raised interest in robotics in the visiting members of parliamant and the press.

By the way, our next public event is only three weeks away. You can see us live in Takustraße 9 during the Long Night of the Sciences (4pm to midnight).

Press reports about the event (in German):

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Pictures from German Open

Some pictures from the German Open in Magdeburg:

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Found hardware bug!

Videos of Day 2

Standup motions and scoring a goal:

Walker training:

Day 2

It’s the second setup day of RoboCup German Open and we are very much busy preparing our robots. We are making excellent progress, however there is still a lot to do and no real time to relax.

We will have our first game tomorrow at 1pm against the new team Bold Hearts, followed by a game at 4pm against the WF Wolves.

At the German Open

RoboCup German Open starts today and we are on our way there right now. Today (Wednesday) and Thursday are setup days (closed to the public), but Friday to Sunday we will play some games against the other teams. If you want to come by and visit us, the entry is free. The schedule is online and will hopefully be updated when more details are known.

We are travelling with four robots (Konrad, Grace, Alan and Ada). We are a bit behind in our software development (not insignificantly caused by quite a few servo motors wreaking havoc the last week), but expect to fix the main remaining issues in the next two days. We will use the competition to evaluate the robots’ weak points (both in hardware and software). When we come back from Magdeburg, there will be precisely 8 weeks left to RoboCup 2013 in Eindhoven.

As usual, we will try to keep updates posted. However, depending on time this may only happen on Facebook or Twitter (also shown live on the right side).

Wish us luck.