In the first podium finish in Bowdoin robotic soccer dog history, the Northern Bites brought home the third place trophy from the RoboCup German Open 2007 in Hannover.
According to team captain Henry Work '06, the team saw significant improvement a week before the tournament.
"We could score consistently, beat the inexperienced teams, and compete with the best teams," he said.
Sophomores Mark McGranaghan, Jeremy Fishman, George Slavov, Tucker Hermans, and Johannes Strom, with Work's leadership, created the software that allows four Sony robots to play soccer on a six-by-four-meter mock soccer field.
Associate Professor of Computer Science Eric Chown, the team's adviser, accompanied the Bites to Germany for two days of round-robins, many "test matches," the quarterfinals, semi-finals, and a third place game.
"I nearly had a fit when we scored two goals in a 'friendly' or 'test match' against the reigning world champions, the NUbots," Work said. "Mike, their captain, and I are good friends, and they blew us out of the water 8-0 last year, so it was great to see our improvement. We later would lose to them in the semis but we notched three legitimate goals in the process."
A minor glitch that led the team to fall unduly short against the better teams came from the goalie.
"Pathetically, our goalie wouldn't stay in the damn goal," said Work. "Against a majority of the teams it didn't matter, as our offense could control the ball most of the game, but against the better teams, we could have really kept it close if we had a dog get in the way more often."
"We finally fixed the goalie on the last day of the tournament and it helped heaps," said Work.
According to Work, this year's Bites have far outstripped last year's team. Sight had been poor, running had been more lethargic, and control of the ball had been average.
"No dog knew where it was on the field nor communicated to its teammates," said Work.
Last year's dogs made for "a swarm team," Work said. "It was like 5-year-olds playing soccer. The ball popped out of a scrum and we all collapsed on top of it. It worked occasionally."
Offensive and defensive skills are solid for this year's team, which is "all about the fundamentals," according to Work.
"We know where we are on the field. We play proper soccer. It's really fun to watch," he said. There are no ball hogs, as this year's team goes for the ball one at a time and dribbles under a time limit.
Over the next two months, the team will be figuring out how to beat the best teams before another tournament in Atlanta. Although only two came out ahead of them, Work said that "we need a lot more strategy in where we position our dogs to take advantage of throw-ins, and to play better defense. Our goalie will be taking up constant work."
"Except for some serious work in vision, what's great is that most of our low-level systems are pretty functional," he added. "Now we get to the fun stuff: the part where we take a bunch of dumb robots and turn them into smart, and potentially dangerous, robots."