RoboCup 2001 Underway

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."

Comments

Re:RoboCop????

[Anonymous Coward]

No. I moderate occasionally and I only ever mod up - I browse at -1 so there's no point in modding down.

let's hope it doesn't get Battlebot'd

[beanerspace]

After recalling some of the complaints expressed in last month's article BYO BattleBot, let's hope this event isn't usurped, commercialized and consequently ruined by Comedy Central.

Though I have to admint, it might be interesting to put a few BattleBots in the stands to give the event the look-and-feel of a soccer riot.

Re:let's hope it doesn't get Battlebot'd

[Anonymous Coward]

What's wrong with Battlebots? That they're not actually robots? Who cares! And as for this "commercialization"... What in the world is wrong with commercializing the sport? If the money keeps flowing, they'll keep doing it. Sure, I like seeing people program AI's that think for themselves... But what in the world is wrong with seeing a 200 pound machine smack another one so hard on the first hit that the other robot, equally powerful self destructs, wheels and hydraulic fluid spurting everywhere? Anyone who has watched the show recently should know the battle I'm talking about. :-) Anyhow, that was the coolest damn thing I ever saw a "robot" do. And the fact that they're actually remote control vehicles and nopt robots doesn't diminish that... I'd much rather watch robots blow up than watch a few robotic puppies walk around at half a foot per second trying to follow a ball. Maybe if these guys actually could code a decent AI it would be more interesting, but those robots SUCK! These universities have millions of dollars and they can't make a robot which can fly, pick up a colored disc and fly it to a new location autonomously? It seems so trivial with today's technology. How hard is it to build a robot that can hover in a stable manner? They've built wheelchair "robots" that can balance on two wheels! It should be no more difficult to make a robot which can control an RC helicopter and have it hover in a stable manner. And finding the stupid colored disc and the target is trivial too. Have you seen the crazy hacks these guys are using? They're making their robots with bits of string! I say we get the guys on Junkyard Wars into this competition... Screw the small crap. Take a van, stick a few jet engines on it, and paint it up real cool, in just 10 hours!

Re:let's hope it doesn't get Battlebot'd

[flumps]

Ho hum. Trolls eh? I suppose I'll stoop this time...

I think you're totally missing the point. Some of these robots are autonomous, and they can communicate and CO-OPERATE together.

In english, this means that they can figure out, without help from people, exactly what they are and what they are supposed to do and how they are supposed to do it. On top of that, they communicate their goals to other robots on the field; leaving jobs to others that they can't do themselves.

Have you ever done the maths to try to figure out how to keep a robot upright, let alone have it hover in a stable manner? Come back when you can translate a gyroscopic reading into mathematical equations to adjust flight axis via electronic motors and gears. Do you know how hard it is mathematically to work out where your legs are supposed to go in order to move forward, or how hard it is to figure out a game strategy based on what all your team mates are doing when they are all working independantly from you? Don't even talk to me about sensors or video optical processing! None of this is trivial by todays technological standards. It is bloody hard, intesive and time consuming mathematics which eats up processor time and leaves alot of robots trundling along at the pace of a snail.

As for the AI, when you can write a program that even comes close to a bot in quake with a single goal, come back and we'll have this discussion again.

Its a shame we have people like you. I like robot wars et al, but really, this technology isnt playing around with robots; it has REAL and IMPORTANT implications for todays society. Imagine a world where, instead of firefighters putting their lives at risk, we had autonomous teams of robots that new how to put out fires and could co-operate to complete the job - or how about a fleet of autonomous helicopters that could communicate and co-operate with each other to do innumerable tasks? Still want your mindless robot wars crap? Thought not.

Do not mock this technology - it's more important and more difficult to achieve than you think, and has more applications than you could ever dream of.

Re:let's hope it doesn't get Battlebot'd

[flumps]

They use a little fuzzy logic or a neural net and they figure out what makes them move forward and then remember that.


The challenge here is to learn HOW to develop the systems that cope with co-operation or learning using neural nets, mathematics or other forms of AI from first principles; finding one that you think works best the best and then pitting it against other people with different ideas (kinda like a genectic algorithm dont ya think?). You may be able to buy a lego mindstorms kit and develop a robot in a weekend, but that doesnt mean that someone didnt have to start building a robot and working out how to achieve these things in the first place or give a good enough reason for not even trying to do this kind of stuff, which if isnt robot wars is still cool.

And I stand by my fact that it takes a lot of maths, even with a neural net or fuzzy logic. How do you think a artificial neural network actually works if not by some form of mathematics? Your brain works in parallel, each neuron firing individually but some at the same time as others - a computer has to go through each neuron individually, calculating the outcomes of every neuron and feeding them into the others etc. We cant even make systems that are as intelligent as an ant yet, let alone a real dog, for the exact reason that is TOO BLOODY SLOW and complicated. We dont know enough about these systems or the systems that create effective behaviour yet - which is exactly WHY we have these competitions.

As for fuzzy logic, yes computational speeds have increased but its still an almost an exponential curve as you add rules to a fuzzy system - and even working out what rules to put into the equation in the first place is sometimes a process of trial and error.
Read this to find out more.

I'm sorry but its not as clear cut or as easy as your nice little world tries to make it out to be, theres a lot of groundwork to be covered in AI. Unfortunately most of AI's potential is still locked up in university labs, or simply not possible because our technology holds us back - we've come a long way but "Mindstorms" only scratches the surface.

Oh and before you shout "What would you know?" at me, I did study this at university, so I do know a little bit about it.. I even wrote my own autonomous co-operating AI agent which avoided walls etc for my final year project. Mindbending maths, I assure you.

Re:let's hope it doesn't get Battlebot'd

[Anonymous Coward]

"Do not mock this technology - it's more important and more difficult to achieve than you think, and has more applications than you could ever dream of." I know the technology has a lot of applications. But I don't beleive it is as difficult as these places make it appear. Look at what Sony's done. "I think you're totally missing the point. Some of these robots are autonomous, and they can communicate and CO-OPERATE together." I have not missed the point. I've watched these robots in action. I've seen what they do. Btw, if you want to try a game where you can build your own autonomous robots that cooperate, take a look at Mind Rover for the PC. www.mindrover.com "In english, this means that they can figure out, without help from people, exactly what they are and what they are supposed to do and how they are supposed to do it . On top of that, they communicate their goals to other robots on the field; leaving jobs to others that they can't do themselves." Without help from people? People programmed soccer AI into the robots with rimple state machines and a few rules to follow based on where the ball is. And while the robots cooperate, the AI is realtively simplisic. And the best robots don't even act very intelligently at all. One of the teams that did well last year I think made their robots most sucessful just by making them move fast, head towards the ball, and spin around fast to whack the ball towards the enemy goal when it reached it. Do you know how many lines of code for the AI that is? Finding the ball on the feild is pretty simple. It's a bright color against a dull background. Just take your video of the feild, divide it up into a grid one half the size of your puck, and then average the hues of all the pixels in each square to get one color. Then figure out which square has the color closest to that of the puck. Or better yet, find the four closest to the color of the puck, and using their closeness to the color of the puck do a little weighted average to find the center of the puck better. After that, the rest of the AI is simple for soccer. Gee, I wonder if the general public is allowed to enter these things. I don't have the electronics expertise to actually contruct a robot, but I wonder if you could use some off the shelf electronics like lego mindstorms to enter with. " Have you ever done the maths to try to figure out how to keep a robot upright, let alone have it hover in a stable manner? Come back when you can translate a gyroscopic reading into mathematical equations to adjust flight axis via electronic motors and gears. Do you know how hard it is mathematically to work out where your legs are supposed to go in order to move forward, or how hard it is to figure out a game strategy based on what all your team mates are doing when they are all working independantly from you?" Mathematical eqwuations to translate gyroscopic force? See? This is why we're stuck in this rut. America is so way behind the times. Japan has been using fuzzy logic for years. FUZZY LOGIC is what enables you to do those things, not some rigid phsyics equations. Ie "I'm tipping a LITTLE to the left so I apply a LITTLE thrust to the left to push me back. HOw do you think nature works? You don't program a robot to walk. You TEACH it. That's how Sony's dog robots work. They use a little fuzzy logic or a neural net and they figure out what makes them move forward and then remember that. And if something breaks, like one of their legs falls off, they figure out a new way to move forward. Trying to create a rigid set of equations to model somethign as complex as walking is stupid. There's so much stuff which you can't control, and without control, rigid systems explode.

Robocup

[hardburlyboogerman]

Would be interesting to see this.

Wow. This could save some $$$s in the UK.

[Flabdabb Hubbard]

Here in England, professional soccer players often earn in excess of 50000GBP per week. Thats around $75000 a week.

Imagine if we could create a race of perfect robotic soccer players. It could render the human players obsolete.

It would be more entertaining to watch the robot players (especially if they have flamethrowers like on robot wars).

We could change the rules to make it more interesting, and all that money we now spend on inflated wages for soccer players could go to a worthy cause, like helping the homeless, or fighting gun crime in inner city areas.

Oh well, back to building my new PC

Re:Wow. This could save some $$$s in the UK.

[boaworm]

That's exactly what they are trying to do. Check out their website, they have set year 2050 as a "goal" to create a team that can compete with humans.

http://www.robocup.org/

Re:Wow. This could save some $$$s in the UK.

[Anonymous Coward]

they have set year 2050 as a "goal" to create a team that can compete with humans.

[synicism]

Hahahahahaha

[/synicism]

Auuggghh! My eyes!

[jeko]

Somebody stop the sponsors of this competition before they senselessly frame the living hell out of yet another website!

Re:Other Sports

[Captain Bonzo]

Wouldnt it be interesting to see some other sports too? Perhaps a decatholon?

In the UK we have had a thing called the 'Robot Games', which was a whole load of 'robot' (mostly remote controlled devices, but a few genuinely computer controlled) events including swimming, running, rope climbing, high and long jumps, mouse mazes, and so on. Some of it was a bit naff but it was great fun to watch.

IJCAI

[SuperJ]

RoboCup is only one part of IJCAI. Another interesting event taking place at IJCAI is the AAAI Mobile Robot Competition for urban search and rescue (USAR) robots. They have to navigate three courses developed at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). The courses have proved extremely difficult for autonomous robots to navigate.

Re:Oh yeah?

[Anonymous Coward]

twat

Re:Other Sports

[Captain Bonzo]

In the UK we have had a thing called the 'Robot Games'

Please excuse me for replying to myself, but I think I'd better correct myself. The event was called 'Technogames' and if you visit the BBC Robot Gallery you can choose to see selected highlights of this year's event. Apologies for not getting it right first time!

international. phew

[fantomas]

wow, this is a truly international robo-footie series (even if you Americans insist on calling it soccer ;-P )

The way the slashdot article was hyperlinked 'the fifth international competition', I had a sinking feeling it was going to be one of those USA 'World Series' sports which turns out to be 'USA plus a couple of guests'. Good on them for having a reasonable spread of participants.

Re:international. phew

[radish]

"International" yes - "World" no, I think that's the point he was trying to make. Calling something the "World Series" kind of implies all (or at least a good chunk) of the world are involved.

Re:international. phew

[Anonymous Coward]

USA plus a couple of guests'

Last time I checked, that qualified as international, unless you don't want us to count those "couple of guest" as foreigners.

RoboCup participants need AI Minds

[Mentifex]

Since every robot needs a topnotch brain, it was a pleasure to be at RoboCup in Seattle on Sat.4.Aug.2001 and to pass out literature directing each Robofex to the http://sourceforge.net/projects/mind/ Artificial Mind of Mentifex. (Today a list of all kn own robotics clubs and their Web addresses has been added to the Docs area of the site, in case you are wondering where to find a robotics club that you may join.)

Go team!

[Anonymous Coward]

YEAH!

RoboCup 2001 in the News

[Observer2001]

Here are some pointers to media reporting on RoboCup 2001 (a few items discuss related events):

"Robo-cup" (audio, requires player) by Lee Gutkind, National Public Radio, Weekend All Things Considered, 28 July 2001

"RoboCup 2001 Marks SGI's Second Year of RoboCup Federation Sponsorship" (press release), PR Newswire, 1 August 2001

"Robot Competitors Meet on a Soccer Field of Dreams" (free registration required) by Jeffrey Selingo, New York Times, 2 August 2001

"RoboCup: Where Bots Kick Butt" by Jason Spingarn-Koff, Lycos News, 2 August 2001

"Rush is on for 'HAL'-like computer to perfect A.I." by Winda Benedetti, Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 3 August 2001

"Robot world cup kicks off", BBC, 3 August 2001

"RoboCup 2001 boots up" by Helen Pearson, Nature Science Update, 3 August 2001

"Blutgrätschen ohne Blut und Beine", stern.de, 3 August 2001

"Roboter aus 23 Ländern tragen Fußballweltmeisterschaft aus", Net-Business Online, 3 August 2001

"RoboCup 2001, il calcio visto dai robot", Punto Informatico, 3 August 2001

"Building a better goalie (buzz, whir)" by Gregory Roberts, Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 4 August 2001

"Man and machine take the field" by David Olsen, Seattle Times, 4 August 2001

"Robots Storm the Soccer Field" by Maria Godoy, TechTV/Tech Live, 6 August 2001

Information about live Webcast of Botball finals (an event distinct from Robocup) on 7-8 August

on getting mod'd down ... and crobots

[beanerspace]

Happened to me last week as well. I wrote a comment that got 5 responses, and was VERY similar to other responses that got moderated up ... and here I thought talking about commercialization of the event was on topic.

I suppose I could have pondered about how much time and cycles could have been spared using a simpler operating system and perhaps retro-fitting some old-school code, e.g. Tom Poindexter's Crobots ... or given my plug for a linux based version of C-Robots ... but ....

then again ... in the words of Cowboy Neal "I said that karma bores me, and I don't understand why people get all hung up over it. It's not like having a high karma is gonna get you discounts in stores. If you're really worried about karma, go donate money to charity or donate your time to some place that can use it."

Galleries good enough?

[piehole]

Don't know about video feeds, but the UW team has a page linking a few galleries and such.

Re:Not replace. Mix.

[Flabdabb Hubbard]

You know, you are absolutely right. You could even allow the humans to have more players on the pitch to counterbalance the superhuman forces of the robots. This idea has potential.

Soccer matches make Baby Darwin cry.

[jeko]

No, let's hope it exactly gets battle-botted.

Soccer matches do not have the raw Darwinian drive to perfection necessary to provide me with my own personal R2 unit before I die. As someone who makes his living in a non-English speaking country, I WANT my own protocol droid, dammit, and I want it SOON, if not now.

Let's face it. If Team Gizmo goes to compete, and GizmoBot misses a point, they're going to go out drinking later and talk.

However, if Team Gizmo goes to compete, and the StripeBot rips the living fur off of poor little GizmoBot, leaving him to howl and scream as he goes into that long night, Team Gizmo ain't going drinking later. No, they're taking their butts back to the lab to make "the MogwaiBot: Midnight Buffet and Swim."

Enough iterations of that, and pretty soon I'll have my very own protocol droid, courtesy of Riff.

eh

[Anonymous Coward]

its football not soccer

(a typical Slashdotter question)

[Anonymous Coward]

Do any of them run Linux?

Other Sports

[slushpupie]

Wouldnt it be interesting to see some other sports too? Perhaps a decatholon?

Re:Other Sports

[eMilkshake]

What's the one where they ski and shoot (biathelon)? Now THAT would be worth watching!

Re:Other Sports

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, there is a decatholon. Check out the Jim2 project at http://www.andrew.cmu.edu/~rc99/ or you can check out the decatholon site at http://www.engr.colostate.edu/depts/me/studact/wmd /wmd2000/index.html Dan B

Re:Other Sports

[NeilArrow]

It's a nice idea, but the challenge in Robocup is in making the robots play as a team. Football (or Soccer for you non-UK types) is a fairly simple game that incorporates all the problems of simulating a team sport.

Most other sports don't have the teamplay aspect. Whilst it would fun to watch robots throwing javelins around a hall full of people, it doesn't require the incredible coding and engineering skills that the Robocup contestants have.

However, they do have a Robot Rescue competition. This requires robots to negotiate an arbitrary warehouse rescuing victims of a fire.

Neil

Video-feeds?

[Hast]

I searched around on the linked pages to no avail, does anyone know if there are video-feeds from the competitions? I'd be particularly interested in the legged competitions, but any at all would be nice.

Comercialization has destroyed events like these

[hillct]

I remember a time (I feel so old...) when these types of events were held at MIT and CalTech but that was about it; when they were entered by teams of grad students who were all engrosed in the technolohical advancement of the machines.

Now there are TV shows like 'Robot Wars' on Comedy Central, and some similar program on the Learning Channel, which make a mockery of these sorts of events, allowing, entry of remote controlled devices rather than robots, and commented on by outragously dressed characcatures of human beings that you'd evpect to see on 'WWF Smackdown!'.

It's good to see that some of these competitions have remained pure durring this time of rampent commercialization.

--CTH

heh...

[Anonymous Coward]

Heh, when I first read this, I pictured a technologically advanced version of the venerable plastic athletic supporter...

RoboCop????

[D. Mann]

I was really excited when I saw the title of the article, because I had mis-read it as "RoboCop 2001 Underway." Imagine my disappointment when I saw it was actually "RoboCup."

I am part man, part machine.

Excuse me, I must go. Somewhere a crime is happening.

Re:Comercialization has destroyed events like thes

[drc500free]

Yes - as part of the intellectual elite, I feel that we shoult keep competitions of this nature to the top 1% of the academic world, and not share with anyone who we deem to be culturally and intellectually inferior to us. After all, if someone spent a year building a BattleBot in his basement with his son, it's absolutely useless if he doesn't have the knowledge to put A.I. in it. The purpose of events like this is to share the ideas and knowledge. True, these shows glam it up with crazy announcers, but that's just like coating some bitter tasting medicine.

The average American wouldn't want to watch this stuff if it was billed as academic, but if they are tricked into actually enjoying it, the field gets more attention.

Re:Comercialization has destroyed events like thes

[Anonymous Coward]

Why do glorified RC car competitions (Battlebots) upstage real autonomous robotics competitions like RoboCup? The answer is that "they're good at fuckin' stuff up", and that reeks of stupid.

where this is heading

[Anonymous Coward]

According to the New York times article, the intent of this competion is to create a team of robots that can defeat the winners of the world cup for soccer by 2050. It also mentions a bunch of humanitarian uses, such as firefighting and other dangerous work.

But it doesn't mention the most obvious "dangerous work." By which I mean, of course, war. Am I the only person troubled by this?

No Mobile Phones?

[Copperhead]

Can you imagine the crisis that all the participants and fans are going through? On one hand, they're watching one of the premire tech/geek events in the world, but at the same time, they can't check their email or voicemail.

What to do? What to do?

Woohoo

[alnapp]

Great, a whole arena full of generic wedge or box shaped bots completely failing to be entertaining.

Videos?!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Where are the freakin' videos? Don't tell me there are no videos of this online?!

Autonomous Robotics

[GospelHead821]

It's slightly off topic, but it bears mentioning here. One of the classes taught at Case Western Reserve deals with building an artificial intelligence that is capable of collecting pastel, plastic eggs and taking them to it's nest, and rejecting black (negative points) eggs (or even better, taking them to the opponent's nest). All of the 'bots are built out of legos. It's a really neat competition too, although I suppose it's hardly of the calibre of making robots that play football. Oh, and just because it's fun to boast, some friends of mine won the competition last year and their 'bot then got a chance to compete against the reigning champion and won!

More info

[boaworm]

For those of you who hasn't read the whole story I can tell this is a very international competition. I'm a M.Sc student in Sweden, and at my university here we've had a RoboCup competition for a few years as well. It is a very good way to learn how to write autonome agents (football players), and gives a good insight in how AI "works".

For those of you interrested in trying this at home (yes you can :-) the software is available for download. You can run the "server" on both Unix and Windows. Its just to write a few players and get rockin!
For those who just wants to see how it all works, there are also old teams to download. Go fetch!

See it if you can!

[LenE]

The goal of this competition is to eventually develop robots and AI that would be capable of competing with a human soccer team. It's a bit scaled down and unrealistic for now, but the machines are getting better every year.

Our team here at Cornell has one the last two international competitions for the small (not AIBO) class robots, in fact, they haven't lost a game yet (although I'm not sure how they're doing right now). Thier team consists of five omnidirectional player robots and one unidirectional (like foozball) goalie robot, all less than one foot in diameter.

The playing field that they use is about one and a half times larger than a ping-pong table, and their class uses a fluorescent orange golf ball for a soccer ball. The players aren't allowed to touch the players on the other team, and none of the robots are permitted to grab the ball (it must remain un-restrained).

A camera is mounted midfield, to give both teams the same video feed. Our entire team is controlled remotely by two computers. One is dedicated to processing the video feed while the other computer does the AI and remote controll of the robots. Unfortunately, they use NT for both because the drivers for their video capture card don't exist yet under Linux.

-- Len

Re:What the hell is wrong with the moderator?

[Anonymous Coward]

Here, here. Moderation on /. is a fucking joke lately. Every post that is even vaguely off-topic is modded with a facist zeal that Hitler himself would be proud of. Fucking sort it out Malda.

Not replace. Mix.

[jeko]

No, no, no. You should have paid more attention in your Lit courses.

People watch sports and movies because they "identify" with their heroes. Watch a boxing match. See how many people move like they're the ones fighting? Been to an actual ball game lately? Ever notice how many beer-sodden wretches actually think they're part of the game? You know why you like sex scenes in movies? Because deep down you sort of believe that you're the one getting laid.

Now, if you replace the human players with bots, you really discourage identification. The whole thing devolves into a tractor pull, which isn't nearly as satisfying as watching Knute Rockney win one for the Gipper.

Here's what you want to do. Mix the humans and robots. Give each team a couple of bots. Make some of them ED 209s. Make the others Bishop.

Inevitably, some of the human players will turn into John Henry "A Man Ain't Nothing But a Man" Heroes who fight valiantly and get ripped apart by the machines.

Now, you have identification, crowds on their feet, stadiums shocked into silence, Maximus getting carried off the field by an honor guard.

And there's your box office.

Re:Not replace. Mix.

[harves]

You obviously haven't been to one of the matches. I used to program stuff in the simulation league (nothing real, just little dots moving about on the screen). You should have seen the people jumping around in the lecture theatre, yelling to their team to c'mon, c'mon, kick it in!

People will identify with - and get involved with - almost anything. You could really feel the tension in the room grow as the ball was moved closer and closer to goals.

Maybe I'm wrong though - I'm an Aussie and we'll place bets on flies crawling up a wall. :)

How boring would that be

[Nevrar]

Um. Have you ever made the computer play itself in chess? How boring is that?

If every robot player is the same (or, if every team is the same), then I predict that it would be very predictable (excuse the pun) and boring. Firstly, no goals would be scored. And secondly, the tabloids would go broke because there wouldn't be any soccer player scandals. And thirdly, there wouldn't be any English soccer player riots in France because there would always be draws (no wait... there would still be riots :)

The current matches have preselected audiences

[jeko]

You do not have statistically normal audiences at your matches right now.

Yes, crowds will gather to watch paint dry. Truckenstein has a fan base.

But I'm talking about Box Office, events that generate excitement across the population at large. Right now, you're holding matches at the Mayfair Municipal Auditorium. I'm talking about matches at Madison Square Garden.

I see what you mean.

[Anonymous Coward]

Looks like some smarmy asshole decided to mark you down even though you had some on topic content.

Too bad it had to cost ya a Karma point to prove you were right.