Dutch Nao Team

The last day in Iran is here. First task: Get our passports (not me, but everyone else. Because I’m awesome and maybe because my country still buys the oil here). As usual, this involved waiting at the office of the Disciplinary Police). We got a staple pin free with our passports! Anyhow, our super nice local friends took the responsibility to show us around. Many of us (keep in mind that here forth, us refers to the whole SPL crowd, including the translators) wanted to see the palace while the others wanted to see the bazaar. So we split up. I was in the Bazaar group, were we bought sweets and other stuff. We also ate at the arguably best restaurant here. It was really the best food I’ve had in the last one year. We tried the subway, but couldn’t make it because it was really crowded (although I thought it was nothing, having been in Mumbai).
Finally, we met the other ground at the mountains. The Dutch were going bonkers all around me at the sight of the mountains. We made it to the top, and enjoyed some Persian leisure time.
After this, we were invited to an underground party (singing AND dancing)! It was pretty epic. Duncan got an offer to act in an international movie in Georgia for 2 weeks. Pretty cool, I think.

The night was over. And the tour of Iran was over. To be honest, it has indeed been most glorious. We will miss this place, and we will miss the people.

We got to the airport, waited, got into our flights. I slept. Woke up in Istanbul. Slept some more. Got into the flight. Slept again. Woke up in Amsterdam. Said our goodbyes. Went home. The End.

The tournament over, we had all the free time in the world. The first thing we wanted to do was sleep. And that we did (gloriously). Next morning, we found our that all of us (except me, and including other teams) were now illegal aliens in Iran and our Visas had officially expired and needed extension. We spent time till 4PM waiting (classic Tehran Style). After the application was submitted, we (almost the whole SPL crowd) went to the glorious Milad Tower, which was a dream come true. Many brought souvenirs here. I found that post cards don’t exist as a concept in the country. Apologies to worldwide friends.
After, we waited around some more (just for fun) and made it to a really nice restaurant. It was Persian themed, and seemed like a nice place to celebrate. I like the way Iranians celebrate. The music was really good too. We love these people. Now we’re all thinking we have too few days here.

Match Day #3! Today, we fight the Greeks. They are a hardworking team. But they have 5 year old NAOs. We have newer and better ones. We should easily beat them, right? HELL YEAH!!! WE WON 2-0!!! FIRST WIN SINCE MEXICO!!! This was clearly the best match ever, mostly because we won. The Greek robots kept falling down, and our hero, the NAO 2 Pirate Guy made all the goals. Pirate Guy even fought NAO 3, which decided to be a traitor and play on the Greek side (wonder why, because we do have a suspicious Greek guy in our team!). But the scariest moment was in the second half, when the Pirate Guy also decided to score in our own goal. And when Pirate Guy decides to score a goal, the Pirate Guy scores a goal. However, the time ran our and we were saved. We won, people!!! 2-0.
THE AFTERMATH: At the glorious closing ceremony (which involved a lot of waiting classic Iranian style), we were awarded the third place by at least 10 people including the famous Dr. Arnoud Visser. We also won 4 Million in prize money. This was no big deal. We panned to treat everyone and spend it all in the next two nights.

Match Day #2! Today we play the home team: MRL. Everywhere we go, we could hear the croud chanting: “M-R-L M-R-L M-R-L M-R-L” But we did not panic. We calibrated more stuff, made walking more optimum. However, we could still not communicate (neither with each other, nor with the game controller). But we went in with what we had. The match was for sure the most interesting match yet. There were 2 goals made. Both were against us. That is, we lost our second match 0-2 to MRL. But the crowd went crazy and at least we gave them good entertainment. MRL deserved to win. We are all famous now, with many of us having to give interviews to the Iranian paparazzi. They were fun.
PAINTBALL: In the evening, the whole SPL league played paintball at this huge arena. There were 2 teams: Team Duncan (green), and Team Kill Duncan (blue). Team Duncan was the team which won most of the matches (although all teams was chanting Kill-Dun-can Kill-Dun-can). Duncan survived. I was part of Team Blue’s Mallaka Snipe Squad! We made many kills.
Back home (hotel), we did nothing much. Joked around, tried to fix the communication again unsuccessfully. Tomorrow is a new day. And the last one of the tournament.

Match Day! Today we played our first match of the tournament. It was against the Italians (SPQL). I heard they used to be the underdogs, but because of some German reasons, they now are touted to be the top teams. Anyhow, the score was 6-0 against us. There were times when we got quite close to scoring, but then our striker decided that scoring a goal wasn’t such a good idea and started walking around the ball. We had two major injuries: one player broke his neck, while the other player broke his ankle. Oh well, we tried. But we found the problem: which was with field detection, and the fix was trying out the new experimental colour calibration tool. It seems to have done the trick (for one robot at least).
Back at the hotel, we got rice and fries and lentils for dinner. Most of us did not like it. Me and Nikolaas liked it. It was nice. A little sour, but I like that. So, we decided to go out for dinner. We went to the ice cream place we found yesterday. There was a pizza place near it, so we dined there. Many jokes were made here. It was fun.

When you go to Persia, you don’t expect a lot of things. But one thing you do expect is good carpets. We tested our robots on the field today, and they keep tripping because the carpet has really loose fabric which forms knots and make our poor Naos trip. All teams are having this problem. This is not cool. However, we now have “internet”. But thanks to UvA VPN, we have access to all the complete world wide web. We showed some local high-schoolers around. Everyone is so polite around here! Tomorrow is our first match, so we tried to get things working today. But our communication still doesn’t work on wifi. We make walking slightly better, and did a test match. We thought things were not too bad. Let’s see what happens tomorrow.
At home (hotel), the hard working Dutch worked on making things better while the people from the rest of the world went out to see the neighbourhood. Found the best ice creams east of Turkey.

The first day at the venue. We came here with all our luggage because were were told by Iranians that we’d be moved to a better hotel tonight (read till the end to know how this story progressed). It was a 30 minute bus ride to the expo area where Robocup was being held along with other robot related exhibitions. The trip somehow seemed to have a lot of U-turns. Anyway, it was pretty exciting. Our workplace is besides the new 9X6 soccer field in accordance with the 2013 rules. There are 3 other teams here in this league we have to compete against: SPQL (Italiano), Kouretes (Ellinas), and MRL (Irani). They all look pretty hard working and smart. So, we’re CLEARLY the coolest team here. There’re pretty Iranian translators next to our workplace. They seem nice. We made some progress with the Humbolt code, and started with the colour calibration and communication with limited progress. There was no internet here, but we were promised Internet in 1 hour (gebeurde niet).
At the end of the day, we boarded the bus that we were told would take us to our new hotel (gebeurde niet). Dinner was spaghetti and yogurt. Yum (no kidding, for real)!

The first ever international Dutch Nao Team are heading for Iran!! This time we’re 4.5 Netherlanders (Duncan, Patrick, Chiel, Sebastian, Nikolaas/2), and 1 Greek (Georgios), 1 Indian (Amogh) and 0.5 German (Nikolaas/2). However, we’re all pretty much dutch at heart. Let’s begin!
So, the journey with all esteemed members meeting at the Schipol International Airport. Duncan was late, but he got loads of food stuff so it was okay. The first flight to Istanbul had no free food. Some of us could sleep, some couldn’t and some had assignments to work on (deadline in 24 hours). Istanbul airport was the worst airport ever for too many reasons. The second flight was the same as the first one (plus a medical emergency with a co-passenger in the flight which was taken care of). Finally we reached Tehran. The visa guy was really rude. I don’t like him. We exchanged money and we all became millionaires (11.5 million, to be exact). Tired, we finally got to the hotel, which was better than many of our expectations (at 8.30 in the morning). Many slept after the much needed breakfast. One (the Indian) still had to work on the assignment (deadline in 15 hours). After four hours, it was time to head to the first setup day of IRAN OPEN ROBOCUP COMPETITIONS (Learning, Glorious future).

The Dutch Nao Team has submitted the qualification material for the next RoboCup in Eindhoven.

The qualification material consists of a movie and a Team Description Paper.

The RoboLab Summer School 2012, an intro to robotics by the Dutch Nao Team, was a great success:

See for the assignments the Summerschool page.

See for an impression the Facebook page.