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Robo World Cup Underway
daveb writes "According to newswire the Robo World Cup discussed last month is now underway. There's fuller details and streaming quicktime video at the robocup2000 home page"
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In a word, yes.
Technology . . is not any of these things. -Bruce Sterling
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Absolutely, But they thing they need most is audience participation. It would be a lot more fun to be there if I could start throwing things at the slow chunky robot bringing up the rear. Survival of the fittest.
There's a piece about kids programming Lego Mindstorms at last years RoboCup in Sweden, where they found that 7-14 year old non-nerd non-geek children were able to program them to score a goal in ~30 minutes or so. Here's the link. If only they had that kind of fun when I was that age...
Black holes are where God divided by zero
As an alum I'd love to see this get more widespread exposure --wish it existed back in my day!
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Oh, yeah, it's not easy to pad these out to 120 characters.
It's also nice the police beating the crap out of ppl from horses with BIG sticks...
In the F-180 league, anyways, the AI is not done on the bot itself. Teams get a camera mounted above the playing surface which sends the image to the computer. The computer then makes the decisions and sends the info to the robots via RF. Color markings on top of Yale's bots help with identifying bot orientation as well as identification; after all, you need to know which bot you're looking at and which one you're going to move!
This year the rules changed to make the walls at a 45 degree angle to discourage bounce shots; I believe the intention is to do away with walls completely in future comptetitions. Next year the competition is in the US somewhere.
It's really cool to see these boxes on wheels driven by vcr motors chase after the golf balls. Maybe not as thrilling as Robot Wars, but thrilling nonetheless.
Simulation: Pure agent based AI programming: 11 agents vs 11 agents kicking the same virtual ball. The league with most participates because people can concentrate on cooperation, learning etc without worrying about screws and bolts. Also the cheapest!! (no hardware)
Small-Size: Overhead camera observes the pitch (size of ping pong table). Bottom line is that there is an external computer that grabbs the frames from that camera, parses it for the relevant information, decides for ALL of the robots and then sends out the commands. Implementations (agent-based vs centralized computation) vary, but then to be the first.
Middle-Size: Autonomous team of 4 robotic agents. ALL sensing must be done in _each_ robot. Communication among the robots is allowed (via wireless), but not with external sources! Scientific Areas range from Obstacle Avoidance to Self-localization methods (ie, finding out where a robot is in the pitch...)
Filipe
The few teams that do not use Linux, such as Sharif CE or U. Minho, are hardcore DOS fans that are forced into writing drivers for the wireless network and/or Bt848 frame grabber.
Filipe
(One of the best experiences was doing tcpdump and seeing loads of IP's (from the various robots) using a wireless channel... )
Robocup = Autonomous, nonviolent robots pushing a ball into a goal
or
Battlebots = Violent radio controlled bots beating the crap out of each other with axes, chainsaws, and spikes...
This is a no brainer.
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Will tomorrow's entertainment industry be wrestling and soccer using robots? Just think, instead of them making all the money, people using Linux and reading Slashdot could cash in developing robot code! I'd program my robot to clean my freakin' bathroom.
..if David Beckham is worried? All they have to do is stick a foppish wig on the bot and the Man Utd boss will be offering 80million quid transfer fees..
http://twitter.com/onion2k
now that the sports and movie indstries have begun using robots, the porn industry should be getting in too: "hey man, check the cards on that bot!"
just my $.015
Professional wrestling is another manefestation of this, but in such events, we can only suspend our disbelief so long. Thankfully, we now can turn to robots to live out our fantasies of war without the ill-effects. Watching two pieces of metal, plastic, and silicon smash into each other, send parts flying, and in all essence, 'kick ass', gives us that satisfaction. We want to be the ones tearing up the opposition, but since we no longer have a society where that is acceptable, our surrogates will do it for us.
Will there be human vs. robot competition? Yes, but it will be on the level of chess matches or lame American Gladiator type of stuff.
This is not the way to build a lasting empire.
Should I insert a smiley here?
The Olympics are cool if you can avoid watching it on american network coverage. God what a load of flag waving. Only americans can win, and when they don't... Well they should have but...
Thank you CBC for providing relatively non-biased coverage..
And the first 500 guests get a complimentary hand grenade.
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Wooden armaments to battle your imaginary foes!
It's meant to be an Multimedia Festival. Instead this year we got Telstra BigPond, Creative, and 3dfx, a couple of small shop graphic firms, and a bunch of noname small PC shops hawking goods. I was HUGELY disappointed...
Open Source. Closed Minds. We are Slashdot.
There is a game out there that consists of programming simulated robots to perform in different tasks, one of them is a 2 vs. 2 hockey game.
Check out http://www.cognitoy.com
I may disagree with your opinion, but I will defend to death your right to speak it.
Quite possibly due to it only being held every four years ;-)
Open Source. Closed Minds. We are Slashdot.
Filipe
BattleBots is fun (I went to the live taping of a show here in San Francisco), but it's not very impressive, technology-wise. My main problem with it is that the robots are just radio-controlled by humans, so it doesn't get into any of the interesting problems that other events like RoboCup do (sensing, reacting, making goals(heh)). It's just like radio controlled cars with buzz-saws bolted on (which IS fun, but I wouldn't really call them robots).
- Isaac =)
I checked out a couple of RoboCup games yesterday ... the "legged league" seems to get all the attention because the players look like cute little doggies, but from what I saw their most outstanding feature was the ability to fall over amusingly (although to be fair they do get up again pretty quick).
The f-180 and f-2000 leagues (robots with wheels) are way cool though... the game between Sharif University from Iran and Melbourne's RMIT United yesterday had everyone on the edge of their seats yelling "go 17!" and "get out of the goal 23!". Seems unfair though that when bits fall off the robots they just get removed from the field ... shouldn't they be allowed injury time?
(music + neurology) * fiction = feedback
yeah, everything sucked except the free coffee and donuts and the robosoccer. oh, and those multimedia armchairs.
(music + neurology) * fiction = feedback
Robots playing soccer?
The next thing you know, they'll be building cars! (grin)
MAB
I'd never bunch of bunch of semi-autonomous, sharp pieces of metal in my underwear. ... Oh, it's not that kind of RoboCup?
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I wanna see those suckers play hockey! Robots on ice with attitude! Then when one of them gets ticked off, they would start fighting a la those Robot Wars! The only problem would be cleaning up the mess and putting the loser back together again and in the Penalty box.
Sig it.
Anyone find where the hi-res quicktime stuff is? The links on the page are broken, can only view the tiny-really-grainy ones.
Aibo's playing soccer.. how cool is that.
BilldaCat
I wonder how many robofans get trampled watching the game....
-- "Almost everyone is an idiot. If you think I'm exaggerating, then you're one of them."
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
As everyone knows, elementary chaos theory states that all robots must eventually turn on their human masters!
The middle mind speaks!
just had an idea: after this RoboCup, if the organizers could save the robots and develop some sort of interface for them so that they could be controlled via the web...they could have robot soccer matches that folks could get the opportunity to sign up for and play. each person would be able to control a robot on a team during a game...imagine web-cams, strategy, chat...
"My mother never saw the irony in calling me a son-of-a-bitch." - Jack Nicholson
The 4th World Robot Soccer Championships and Workshop, RoboCup 2000 Melbourne, will be the most interesting sporting event that will be held in Australia this year.
Umm... what about the Olympics??
-- "Almost everyone is an idiot. If you think I'm exaggerating, then you're one of them."
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
You know, I'm quite surprised that finally we have a decent IT/technology thing in my home town. We've been robbed of a lot of nice technological exhibitions and trade shows (only Sydney has been getting them recently), and even out current trade show is a little lacking (www.interact2000.com.au), which is on right now.
In fact, I'm heading in there tomorrow, and might check out RoboCup while I'm at it.
-tsg
ComedyCentral has a great new series now called 'BattleBots' where you try to destroy the other robot. [Sounds more fun to me =) ] Its on wednesdays, so check it out tonight!
I can't imagine that watching robots playing soccer is too much fun. We should just stick with the good stuff.
Robot fighting! Nothing better than watching a giant razor cut through another robot sending shrapnel all over the battlefield.
Are we going to get this every year?
This isn't the first time the competition has been held, and it's been getting a couple postings to the front page on /.
I guess it's not as bad has getting three stories linking to a dot matrix symphony, but . . .
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Never trust anyone over 90000.
Challenge the newsworthiness of an article such as this one.
In the UK we have the rather poor "Robowars" on TV. All the robots are submitted by gormless geeks and sad old men. I'm sure the Robot World Cup is much the same...
Were there robot-hooligans attending the matchs ?
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Trolling using another account since 2005.
There are actually two types of robot soccer competition.
One competition uses a global camera mounted above the field of play. The computer tells the difference between each robots by the color on the robot.
This competition states that the camera must be mounted on the robot itself.
Hey... a few guys in my engineering program actually did this last year for their project! In the competition I saw the robot squirt a water gun to put out a candle somewhere on a flat area.
I found the link for one of the groups who did this,
and the assignment page here.
Dictionary definitions vary, but to me a robot is an autonomous unit. These are close - I gather (though I wish I could find official rules somewhere) that these are controlled by an off-field computer but at least their behavior doesn't seem to be modified by humans at runtime.
Nothing like "Battlebots", which has gone by other names in the past and is really just a bunch of destructive radio controlled cars and IMO shouldn't be allowed to use the term "robot" at all. Mildly entertaining to watch, but it has nothing to do with the field of Robotics, which to me is the interesting bit.
/* The beatings will continue until morale improves. */
You forgot that the reason the Humans survived, WON, was because of their short lifespans, they also had a higher reproductive rate, and were better able to withstand disruptions to their populations like the ice ages, diseases, and the Wars. Also, because humans were more violent and vicious, they tended to START more of the wars, which tactically gave them the element of suprise more often than not, so more often than not, they won based on that. Another factor that caused the humans to start more wars, was that since they were so short-lived, they didn't tend to remember the devestation caused by previous wars 30-50 years earlier - plus for some reason, even though they had shorter lives, they were more willing to die, especially in battle, the element of being able to sacrifice troops was often very decisive. Religion may have played a role there, because it promised an eternal afterlife.
Perhaps the greatest advantage the humans had over their dwarven and elvish foes; the humans WEREN'T IMAGINARY CREATURES!
if it ain't broke, then fix it 'till it is!
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
You can play your own version of RoboCup using the JavaBots package from Carnegie Mellon University. All you need is JDK 1.1 or better running on any box. I know I had fun with this when I was a grad student!
The Tyrrany Begins....
Finding God in a Dog
It also had an article about the Sony Aibo league as well.
It turns out there's a simulator league, an Aibo league (which was demonstration only) and a handbuilt league-of interest, the Aibo league used vision systems integrated in the Sony testbed-the article mentioned that the dogs can recognize and track points in space using YUV colour processing. One handbuilt entrant included custom chasses with built in Toshiba Librettos as main processors, others used embedded boards.
Anyways, an interesting read if you can find at your local university library. It's published by the AAAI, but they're not online... :(
--Calum
Robots? These are RC cars from the mad max movies. I'm sure its lots of *yawn* fun to watch.
Check out our webpage. http://peach.mie.ut oronto.ca/events/lego/lego-091600-rules.html
Calum
Enjoy.
Frogs are primitive animals - so the occasional extra toe is not that unusual. But this is very unusual.
Robot sports are making their way into the mainstream.
High school geeks can compete in FIRST robot competitions through a school club. The radio controlled robots which are programmed in modified BASIC are made to pick up balls and place them in their goal. The team with the most balls wins the match. The competition was aired on the NASA/Government channel.
Some sort of robot fighting event was on pay per view a few months ago too.
It would be fun if they combined this with BATTLEBOTS.
Then it would be more like real life soccor (football or whatever you call it in your local)!
the firefighting robot competition at Trinity College in Hartford CT. The rules for the 2001 competition will be posted on September 1. From the official web page: "This is the largest, public, true Robotics competition held in the U.S. that is open to entrants of any age, ability or experience from anywhere in the world... The goal of the 2001 contest is the same - to build a Robot that can find and extinguish a fire in a house. The challenge for the entrants is to build a computerized (not radio-controlled) Robotic device that can move through a model of a single floor of a house, detect fire (a lit candle) and then put it out. Robots that consistantly accomplish this task in the shortest time win."
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Oh, yeah, it's not easy to pad these out to 120 characters.
Several teams from my school have been working on this for a couple of years now. They've got a page up at this link.
Interestingly -- to me at least -- they aren't actually working with robots, but rather software automata that can somewhere down the line be used as the brains for autonomous soccer playing robots. To that end, they set it up so they can play a server and students can all write their own soccer playing clients that work together on teams. They're amusingly bad, but encouraging as well -- you can see where things might lead.
The home page for the research groups has some neat stuff as well. Whoa -- they even link to my old project! Ain't that nice of them... :)
Anyway, point being is that RoboCup is a big, worldwide research effort and it's not all just hardware. Interesting stuff...
DO NOT LEAVE IT IS NOT REAL
In related news: the dismissal of Kenny Baker as R2D2 from the cast of Star Wars has allowed him to persue other possibilities. Baker says, "If I can play R2D2 in Star Wars, I can play R2D2 in a soccer field! I'm going to enter the RoboCup and kick some ass. My strategy? I'm going to bump and bumble into all the robots and get them worked up like C3P0."
...I am proof that intelligent beings are not always intelligent...
Something for Kenny Baker to do with all that free time he has on his hands now!
-JD
I was poking around at the Science Museum in London the day after their new "Wellcome Wing" opened, and I got on a tour of the then-still-under-construction floor about computers. There's was some nifty stuff (fingerpint recognition, facial scanning and remodeling, sound distortion, etc.), but the coolest part for me was this one alcove where a guy sat, playing with an Aibo. Apparently, his job was to train the thing to be nice to people and do interesting things.
Anyway, he hands me the pink ball that the dog supposedly liked and said, "Here... show this to him, and he'll try to play football with it" (or something like that). So I hold the ball out the robotic critter, and suddenly it spins around, its eyes glowing red, and it rears up on its hind legs and paws furiously at the air, making distraught noises.
I'm sure "Satan mode" is not included in the user manual...
Anyway, let's hope they're nicer to the referrees.
BTW, I eventually got it kicking the ball. (sidenote: to be really mean, show it the ball, let it set up for a kick, then snatch the ball away. The aibo will follow through on the kick, then get all depressive because it didn't kick the ball.)
-J
Karma: T-rexcellent.
Or perhaps even a mod'ed potato cannon to fire the ball.
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Wooden armaments to battle your imaginary foes!
I'm new here, so I guess I haven't had to live through seeing the same story put up over and over. With that one caveat, I am not saying your point isn't worth considering, but because I am new I haven't seen this story and was glad to have been clued in on it.
This is not the way to build a lasting empire.