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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 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.
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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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?
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.
Quite possibly due to it only being held every four years ;-)
Open Source. Closed Minds. We are Slashdot.
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
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
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!
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.
Were there robot-hooligans attending the matchs ?
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Trolling using another account since 2005.
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 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
Robots? These are RC cars from the mad max movies. I'm sure its lots of *yawn* fun to watch.
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...
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!