RoboCup in China

Hi!

Okay, so I've been to China, since we last spoke. Interesting people, the Chinese! I was there for RoboCup 2008, the world championship of RoboCup. I was helping organize the Simulation League (specifically the 3D Simulation League) and also I was there as part of a team competing in it (The Little Green Bats (yes, we were drunk when we made up that name ;)). We did very well, the team won the third price and I got promoted to chair of the organizing committee.

Although China is,politicaly, a bit of a difficult country, the people are really nice and helpful and I would really recommend it as a place to visit on holliday! I have enjoyed myself there immensely, if it were only in observing the differences in culture. Also the food is great and it's all very cheap! We ate with eight persons for less money than it would have cost us per person here in The Netherlands..

Interesting, I almost said: "Europe" there instead of "The Netherlands"? This year I've visited both the US and China (and was invited to visit Iran, but sadly couldn't go) and as a result I'm starting to get a more global perspective I think. For americans and for chinese, we come from europe but to us we always come from our separate countries.. but is that changing? I think, slowly but surely, we are coming to see ourselfs as Europe. I think this is inevitable, we are economicaly, politically and culturally pushed in that direction.. One day we are probably going to be Europe! And I think we are probably going to speak English here.. I hope so, I like English :).. But this will happen slowly.
Then again, a lot can happen in a short time, just over 50 years ago we were still having a world war over here and now look at us? Maybe in 50 years China will resemble a democracy, Europe will be one big English speaking nation (in which England will have joined as the very last separate country of course), and in a big show of "civilization" China, Europe and the US will be the new "west", together with Russia of course.. We could call it: The North .. + australia ... or something like that :)..

O well.. maybe I'm overreacting here :).. time for bed I think.

See you later!

Mart

Happyness is What Happy Brings

Time for some optimism! My last post was a little bit on the gloomy side, I think. But It's much nicer to write happy messages :). In fact, this reminds me of when I and my team (The Little Green Bats) participated in the RoboCup world cup 2007 in Atlanta (and incidentally we won second place :)). A lot of the teams against which we competed were from china and well they have a different culture than, at least, where I come from and they sort of seem to take everything very seriously. When their agents were playing, they just sat there, not showing any emotion. And I have to say, when you are playing against another team, it is really exciting, to the point that it is down right scary! Every time we were going to be playing, I just got the urge to go to the bathroom, I dared not watch!
But to come back to it, we acted a bit differently. We got up and went to stand close to the screen and, we were really excited, so we ooh-ed and ah-ed and applauded and screamed and laughed. We had to, we couldn't help it. I mean, it was the World Championship, we worked almost two years on it, we wanted to win! And that was when someone said, what was almost the nicest thing anyone has ever said to me (well our team), she said: "You are a happy team!".
It is nice to be called happy. I never realized that before.. but I think it is a really great compliment to be called happy. I should thank her, when I see her again next year, in china..

Bye now! You're Happy!

Robocup or Robocop?

Robocup is a good starter subject I guess. Me and four friends competed last year in the World Championship RoboCup, 3D Simulation League (under the name LittleGreenBats). It was really exciting. It basically is a virtual soccer match in which our team had to compete against a whole lot of other teams from all over the world. We ended about 20th. Which really isn't all that bad. Most of all it was just fun! This year we're trying again. We've been at it since September. We redesigned most of our architecture and it is starting to come together.
The only pitfall is that it is decided (by the league) that this year we need to play with humanoid players (last year it was more or less floating spheres), which means that we need to program them to run and to have any chance we need them to run really fast and precise too.. We need to qualify no later than the 10th of March, which is pretty quick and as of yet only one team member has succeeded in running the server that supports the humanoid players... But still I think we are going to make it!

I'll post any progress here! So come back if you're interested..