Slashdot Mirror

Craig writes "The 2007 installment of RoboCup has begun; individual events opened to the public today. RoboCup is an international robotics symposium and competition whose goal is to advance the fields of robotics and artificial intelligence to the point that in 2050 a robot soccer team can defeat the human world champions. This year, RoboCup is located on the Georgia Tech campus in Atlanta, GA, marking the first time a university is hosting it and only the second time since it began in 1993 that it is located in the United States."

An anonymous reader writes "This article by a Ph.D student at Shanghai JiaoTong University (SJTU) Research Institute of Robotics describes an RTLinux-powered robot that placed fifth in the most recent RoboCup competition. The robot has two color cameras for visual sensing along with a laser range finder (LRF) for goalkeeper location, and a wireless LAN allows communication among the robots on SJTU's team. The robot's embedded operating system is Red Hat Linux enhanced with the RTLinuxPro real-time extension."

SeriousEyePanda writes "With this year's edition of RoboCup now taking place in Portugal (June 27-July 5), and many of us not able to attend, I'd like to ask for on-site reports from the event. The official site seems a bit lacking in this respect. What are your experiences and thoughts so far? Links to videos depicting game play would be especially appreciated (Freecached for Pete's sake)"

RuiFerreira writes "Artificial Intelligence and Robotics researchers meet in Portugal from 27th June to 5th July in the 8th Robocup Football World Championships. RoboCup is an international research and education initiative. Its goal is to foster artificial intelligence and robotics research by providing a standard problem where a wide range of technologies can be examined and integrated. The RoboCup Federation proposed the ultimate goal of the RoboCup Initiative to be stated as follows: 'By 2050, a team of fully autonomous humanoid robot soccer players shall win a soccer game, complying with the official FIFA rules, against the winner of the most recent World Cup of Human Soccer.' Robocup has an exciting programme including RoboCup Symposium, the RoboCup Soccer (humanoid, middle-size, small-size, 4-legged, simulation), the RoboCup Rescue (real and simulated robots) and the RoboCup Junior (dance, soccer and rescue) competitions. The robotic competitions will take place at Pavilion 4 of Lisbon Industry Fair located at the Parque das Nações, the site of the 1998 World Exposition (EXPO'98)."

MacGod asks: "As an extra-curricular for my university, I am working some other engineers to try and design a RoboSoccer Project (please don't wipe out our server if possible), with the hopes of entering the RoboCup tournament in the near future. We are currently using some low-frequency Abacom RF communication modules, but would like to able to go to BlueTooth if possible. However, I have found it nearly impossible to locate any suitable BlueTooth modules. We'd really like something that could be put onto a breadboard, and that would come with sufficiently detailed instructions that we'd be able to implement it without being BlueTooth experts. Any suggestion on homebrew BlueTooth solutions, Slashdot?"

JasonFleischer writes "Although the official line from the RoboCup competition is that robots should be ready to challenge humans on the soccer field by the year 2050, we don't have to wait that long to see man-machine competition in the bar. Researchers in Germany have developed a table football (foosball, table soccer, whatever) robot. The human challenger(s) take the red team, while the machine works the blue side, using an overhead video camera to see what's happening on the table. The conference paper shows that while the machine generally wins against the normal bar-amatuer it has no chance against a human grandmaster. But these kinds of things are always improving, after all look how big a deal the man-machine chess competition turned out to be. So perhaps the current table football world champions should be watching their backs."

BrianWCarver writes "The Washington Post has an article about teams of college students who program Sony AIBO Robotic Dogs to play soccer against each other in teams of four. While Beckham's job is not yet jeopardized, the cool thing from an AI perspective is that 'once the humans flip the switch, the robots are on their own.' They compete in RoboCup whose stated goal is to 'by the year 2050, develop a team of fully autonomous humanoid robots that can win against the human world soccer champion team.' RoboCup also has competitions with wheeled soccer bots (of varying designs) and have a humanoid league in which the Honda ASIMO appeared. The students in the above article are preparing for the four-legged international championship coming up in July of 2003 in Padua, Italy."

Dan B writes: "RoboCup 2001, the fifth international competition, is underway. The competition is held from August 2nd through the 10th at the Washington State Convention and Trade Center in Seattle, Washington, USA. International teams compete their autonomous soccer-playing robots in three different leagues including Sony Legged League (remember the cute puppies?). The competition is open to the public, so if you happen to be near Seattle, check it out."

More updates and links below on HavenCo, robots that kick balls, and what can already be said to be one of the millenium's most anticipated movies thus far. Oh, and some nice auditory/textual backup to the recent story about RMS vs. Goliath.

Not asking, not telling. jeffthompson writes: "The Havenco web site says it is now fully operational and open for business." A lot of people seemed convinced that Havenco wouldn't even be around by this time, but sticking around is the best revenge. I'd like to go aboard one day, promise I'll wear a blindfold and not look at anything ...

GNU, Linux, GNU/Linux, Freedom and the American Way. bkuhn writes: "Now, both the electronic audio and transcript of RMS' NYU talk are available."

The audio is in Ogg format, and the transcription is in blessed plaintext. Thanks!

Sign #37 of the coming apocalypse: Speaking of Mundie, software Freedom (and free-ness), Simone Paddock of O'Reilly writes with news that might raise a few eyebrows:

"Microsoft Senior Vice President Craig Mundie set off a compelling debate recently when he discussed Microsoft's Shared Source Philosophy, which blends the sharing of source code with the preservation of intellectual property rights.

Tim O'Reilly invited him to attend the upcoming O'Reilly Open Source Convention (July 23-27, 2001 in San Diego). Mundie not only agreed to attend, he agreed to speak.

Mundie will discuss ways in which shared source differs from open source, and how the Shared Source Philosophy supports a strong software business case for commercial software use."

Michael Tiemann (CTO of Red Hat) will speak after Mundie, and a panel of IP law and software experts (including Tim O'Reilly) will discuss the issues raised. Sounds worth being in San Diego for. If you're interested, there's more information online.

In the Tolkein, not the endocrinological or Snow White sense. SomeoneYouDontKnow writes: "This is a follow-up on the recently-released LOTR trailer. It's now available for download. Two versions are available to suit your bandwidth and patience. Unfortunately, it's still only available in Real format, but I guess we can't have everything."

Semi-alive and kicking. IEEE Spectrum Associate Editor Stephen Cass writes:

IEEE Spectrum , the house magazine of the IEEE is launching an online forum devoted to the noble sport of robosoccer . Robosoccer is different from things like Battle Bots or Robot Wars in that the robots play in teams and the whole thing is completely autonomous once started. There are a number of competitions, the biggest of which is the annual Robocup tournament, which will be held in Seattle this year. Robosoccer is a great reasearch tool for exploring A.I., automous agent behaviour, computer vision, simulation and mechanical and electrical design. It attracts participants ranging from high school students to academic researchers.

Our website (which incidentally runs slashcode) will also be a clearing house for us to award sponsorship money for teams building robosoccer robots as well as a place to exchange information.

Hard to get enough of Robots playing soccer, and prize money means you can buy more marshmallows to roast at your victory bonfire.