Rok travelled with a broken leg, which was yet another obstacle. He couldn't walk on it and had to use crutches. Since getting around airports on crutches is impossible, we tried to arrange a wheelchair for him. In Frankfurt the agency through which we had bought the tickets helped us, but in Beijing and Hefei it couldn't get in touch with anyone. It probably goes without saying that China is a communist country, so many things are organised differently there…
We flew with Air China. With this airline online check-in isn't possible, so seats can't be reserved. We received boarding passes with seat numbers for the Frankfurt–Beijing and Beijing–Hefei flights at the gate in Frankfurt, where we of course tried to get Rok an aisle seat so he could stretch his leg.
The journey went fairly smoothly as far as Beijing, where we were supposed to have only a technical stop. On the plane (it wasn't possible earlier) the friendly cabin crew arranged a wheelchair for Rok. A kind gentleman was waiting for us at the airport with the wheelchair. Since we were already late leaving Frankfurt, he literally chased us along so we would reach the next plane as quickly as possible. Even though some 50 passengers were transferring from the old plane to the new one, he didn't care — he looked after only us. So we went past every possible queue, through every check with priority, onto the trains to the new terminal and so on. On the train he reminded us that the plane was leaving in one minute. But just as we were nearly there, things went wrong. At the entrance to the terminal they checked the boarding passes we had received in Frankfurt. These showed the Beijing departure with the same date as the Frankfurt flight — but here it was already the next day, and so a new date. So they wouldn't let us through. Then the ordeal began: from one counter to the next, one floor after another. Thank goodness the gentleman was with us to guide us. Almost nobody in China speaks English, not even at the airport — and those who do speak it in a way nobody understands.
At one counter they warned us that there would be no plane with a free seat to Hefei for the next two days, so they were already suggesting we wait two days in Beijing. After we kept pointing at Rok in his wheelchair, they took pity on us and sent us on.
After an hour we were back at the same place where we had been turned away before. This time two airport staff were with us, which probably helped, because now they let us through. After a good hour we finally boarded the plane, where all the other passengers were waiting for us. And we still didn't take off: because of the original delay we had to wait for the luggage and for our slot in the take-off queue. The plane left two hours late.
To cut a long story short: we arrived safely in Hefei. Rok got a wheelchair again. The local agency drove us to the hotel, where we will apparently rest today, as it is pouring with rain outside.
Two days of non-stop rain actually did us good: instead of sightseeing, we could spend the time preparing for the competition.
On 18 July 2015 we had to register for the competition, and it officially began with a so-called setup day. Once again Rok's injured leg “came in handy”: we didn't have to wait in the queue — our team was seated and served first. That did have some downsides, though: none of the volunteers handling registration knew how things would work, what to give us, where we would get which materials, and so on. They also forgot to give one of our teams its registration confirmation. That day was also the official opening of the competition. All the competitors went to the stands to watch the opening ceremony on the DANCE stage. All of them — except Rok, who was, as always, the exception.
We stayed at the venue until late in the evening so the students could test their robots and fix any errors.
The next day we had to be at the venue very early, as the first round of Rescue Maze was scheduled. The Rescue CoSpace competitors only started the following day. The competition started badly for our Maze team. In the first round the black-tile sensor didn't work. In the second round the students got the sensor working, but then one of the I2C lines failed. The robot did score some points in both rounds, but it left us well behind the teams at the top. In the third round the robot failed completely: the whole main board with the microcontroller died. Since this happened in the evening — it had looked as if the robot was slowly “dying” — we couldn't do anything more that day.
So the next morning Matjaž and I went into action. We got the addresses of the city's bigger electronics shops from the volunteers and hotel staff and took a taxi there. Of course, the part we needed was nowhere to be found. Let me describe these shops: from outside, nobody would have expected what was inside. All you could see was the shop window of some grimy store nobody would enter without a reason. Inside, though, it was a fairy tale — 6 floors, each with at least 100 small shops. Only what we were looking for was nowhere.
We went into the city four times and visited different shops. We visited the RoboCup Major venue and its technical support. They couldn't help us either. Technical university representatives told us about some new shops, but they didn't have the part either. After a whole day of searching and taking taxis back and forth, we got the first piece of information that might actually be useful: the part could be ordered online. Great. The catch — delivery takes 3 days, by which time the competition would be over. So we accepted that we would finish last in this category. I suggested to Matjaž that on the third day of the competition he offer to help the organisers with refereeing in other categories.
When we got back to the hotel in the evening, we met the other team, who had a different problem. That day they had the technical challenge, where they came fourth, missing an award by a hair. The next day was the main part of the competition, which is where the whole idea of CoSpace comes into play: the physical robot has to do what the virtual robot does. The problem: the program that worked in the virtual environment couldn't be loaded onto the physical robot. Uroš and Simon had written their program in C#, but the physical robot needed plain C. Despite all our complaints and arguments with the organisers, we couldn't change anything. The students were even allowed to take the physical robot to the hotel overnight, but it didn't help, as they couldn't check its behaviour in the maze or calibrate the colours. In the end they wrote the program in a graphical interface that supported both the virtual and the physical robot.
The next day, everything went like clockwork. They lost only one match and, with a 4:1 record, went through to the knockout stage as runners-up in their group. They lost the semi-final to the eventual winner, but won the match for third place convincingly — taking 3rd place.
The other team, thanks to an excellent interview (compulsory for all competitors), convinced the judges, who gave them the award for the most revolutionary rescue-kit deployment mechanism.
Excellent work, guys — congratulations.
A few more snapshots from the city:
Miran Waldhütter