The highlight of the cooperation was to have been taking part in the ROBOCUP JUNIOR 2013 world championship. As the organisers could not secure a place at the world championship, they offered the SI-AT team the chance to compete at the Portuguese Open in Lisbon instead. Even though the competition came very early — two months before the world championship, when we had planned for the robot to be fully working — we were glad to take part.
We were in Lisbon from 24 to 30 April 2013. Despite the nice weather it was extremely windy, so we were almost cold. The city is extraordinarily beautiful — it is not for nothing that it is called one of the most beautiful cities in the world. The buildings in the city are covered in tiles, which gives them a special charm.
At the competition itself our biggest obstacle was the language: the locals spoke Portuguese, and we even signed the competition records in Portuguese. Since no results were published anywhere and we couldn't understand their records, we didn't know how they were scoring until the start of the final round. We were very unpleasantly surprised that they did not follow the international rules and scored “their own way”, so the competition itself was not very successful.
We also visited one of the largest oceanariums in the world, located in the most modern part of Lisbon.