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Robocup 2002 World Robot Soccer Championships
dipfan writes "While the rest of the world is watching the soccer world championships in Korea and Japan this summer, at the same time the Robocup 2002 competition for soccer-playing robots is to take place there - the sixth time the tournament has been held, with 35 countries competing and this time including a "humanoid league" competition. The purpose is to foster research in robotics, with the aim of building a team of robots that can play and win against the best human teams by 2050. One of the pre-tournament favourites this year is Iran, who did well in 2000 but not in 2001. The Swedish team includes a star player named Priscilla, described as "looking like a sister of the Terminator". One of the Swedish designers comments: 'you don't want to give too much freedom to the robots as they will go crazy.' Much like flesh-and-blood highly-paid sports stars really."
Burt "Out of my mind back in 5 minutes"
Finally, a robot with balls.
Isn't Iran part of that scary Axis of Evil?
... first they'll take over professional sports. Before you know it, their evil army of robots will soon be causing havoc in our streets and marrying Spice Girls.
Better watch out
Tuus crepidae innexilis sunt.
Oh, great, crazy robots and soccer. Like there isn't enough soccer violence already. Next we'll have robot soccer players wigging out and pulling spectators out of the stands.
I am dreading to imagine what the father looks like if he finds out I was messing around with her...
Dodge this !! --Trinity, The Matrix
While i was talking to this phillips guy, who worked on this project in his spare time, some weeks ago he gave a demonstration (showing some video) this was my first contact with this sport, but it looked very cool...although there not one of the favourites (yet) i think its nice to c what kinda work is being done.
And above what parts of this research can be used for other parts of lets say the medical industry etc.
Keep up the good work guys
In related news today, the Brazilian contender for this year's Robot Soccer Cup was disqualified after testing positive for overclocking.
If Jesus wants me it knows where to find me.
I don't understand their goal to make those robot play human player by 2050... How can this be fair?
The robot doesn't get tired, and doesn't feel pain when his lower legs hits a steel bar!
Unless they plan to recreate pain and sleepiness...(And that we can trust them not to cheat (ya sure...!))
When I first read this, I could've sworn it read Robocop. I can only say I'm disappointed -- players being riddled with bullets from Robo's automatic pistal or impaled on that data spike would make things pretty interesting.
I dream of a day where we have robots to play soccer for us thus freeing up humans for more valuable endeavours like building pyramids out of Coke cans.
Burt "Out of my mind back in 5 minutes"
If you're going to build a robot, make it useful! (Hey! Bring me a beer!)
I saw this on the local (Orlando) news last night. A guy at UF built a beer opening robot (ABOR) as part of a project/competition. Some amusing ideas. Here's a link to a story about it: Robots
Planetes
"One World, One Web, One Program" - Microsoft Promo Ad
"Ein Volk, Ein Reich, Ein Fuhrer" - Adolf Hitl
Our robots will be very unique this year, our fastest omni design yet. Just wait... :)
Will Stokes Album Shaper http://albumshaper.sf.net
Sure, it's all fluff, but they've done a pretty good job of keeping things 'in the name of science', for the most part (like the balance competition). I don't see how it hurts anything. Sure, it's more impressive and useful to send a robot down a mineshaft (or whatever), but it's just not that exciting. Get the kids hooked on robots now - they'll prove themselves once the gee-whiz factor gets old.
If Jesus wants me it knows where to find me.
So if they throw rolls of toilet paper onto the field at regular matches, what'll they throw when the robots are playing? Rolls of duct tape?
This is the NFL, which stands for "Not For Long" if you keep making those bulls*** calls.
Has been able to win against the best chess player. So if I understand correctly, the logic involved to win a game isn't really the problem, it is more of a mechanical problem, isn't it? Recent video games are already able to beat really good video game player, and there are not even super-killer-incredibly-intelligent applications. So I think that 2050 is a good goal to try to achieve. By then, the mechanic involved in robot should have marginally improved and also processor power. My guess is that I should not even take that long. On the other side, looking a robot playing sports would not give me the same excitement has watching a true local team kick the ass of it's oponent. I'm currently following the Canadian-Boston series (I'm from Montreal), and the thrill is really to see those guys fight to win and put all there energy into it. Even if they lose, in the end I'll be proud of "my team". Would it be robots playing, I'm not sure I would be so much partisan. It would only be an enhanced Robot War :-) But, it is quite interesting stuff, and great for the advancement of science. We should see more of this in more field. maybe also organize Geek Olympics!
I'd rather be sailing...
This project is an 'all encompassing' project involving so many research areas (vision, AI, real-time, networking, embedded, hardware, radio comms, more....). It is a very and interesting useful project from an academic point of view because you can put new research into something practical.
Research ideas are so often just theoritical, this is a chance to see how it works in a practical integrated system.
"combat seems to be the only way that men express themselves or advance their knowledge."
For someone with a PhD, that is a remarkably narrow-minded and sweeping generalisation. Perhaps you should ask a few men whether they consider fighting to be their only method of information discovery.
Simon. PhD. In image processing.
Physicists get Hadrons!
Ok, ok, maybe its troll, but I can't resist. Whose gonna' be the first one to attempt a slide tackle on a robot? If a half-ton robot falls on you, your in for some pain.
My university, Carnegie Mellon, competes in this competition. We usually do very well, I think second last year or the year before. But if anyone would like to see a video of the action, here's one here. Very cool stuff.
Here are some pictures of Priscilla. That robot is scary looking. I wouldn't want to meet it (her?) on a soccer field or anywhere else.
Robots should be cute. Otherwise they remind us of the whole taking-over-the-world scenario.
Genocide Man -- Life is funny. Death is funnier. Mass murder can be hilarious.
Playing soccer DOES involve solving problems of vision and cognition. Sure there is some hacking involved but work of scientific work gets done in the process.
I had a chance to attend a great presentation by Prof. Manuela Veloso of CMU just a few weeks ago and I found that that Robot Soccer is pushing a lot of advances in Multi Agent learning and planning.
The coolest part is when she played video of what the robots(these were AIBOs) were seeing when they were playing soccer. The camera was jerking all over the place, the perspective was topsy turvy, upside down, sideways, yet they still managed to find and hit the ball.Even she was surprised that they were able to work with such "dirty" data.
People are always knocking this work, but its not as trivial as it may seem at first.
The only reason all cover-ups appear to fail is that you never hear about the ones that succeed.
Two to three years ago, a team mounted a spinning blade in front of the robot. The ball bounced like a bullet whenver got in touch with the spinning blade. It upset many people. Not only because that is of little skill, but also may damage other people's robot... At the end, the design was banded for further matches.
True story from a lecturer that I know, who is a veteran robocup participant.
Of course the only one who gave up on the human race in a competition vs. robots, was a french-speaking canuck!
... I've been dutifully building a robot soccer (football) spectator. I'm just putting the finishing touches on the riot subroutine now...
"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education." - Mark Twain
Not soccer.
Not the World Championships.
The World Cup of football.
If repeated long enough, maybe even the merkins can learn.
Would it be possible to add spinning blades and house bots to this soccer arena?
The genius of today's great footballers (Zenidine Zidance, Luis Figo, Rivaldo et al) is their incredible creativity and flair for doing the unexpected. (I'm not offtopic, read on a bit). Often they choose the improbable course of action, which, because it is unexpected by the opposition, yields results.
I will be interested to see whether these robots are able to be programmed with the same creative impulses that a professional footballer posseses, or whether the style of play will remain formulaic and based on high-percentage tactics. It'd certainly suck if all they did was lob the ball forward and try and get a head on it *cough*englishfootball*cough*, but just imagine how pissed off you'd be if you got nutmeged (ball through the legs) by a robot!
D'you rekcon they will eventually manage bicycle/scissor kicks? Just be sure to avoid getting landed on *wince*
Antiquis temporibus, nati tibi similes in rupibus ventosissimis exponebantur ad necem.
I visited this thing back in '99 when it was held in Stockholm.
;-)
Cool stuff! (I liked the Sony Aibo compo, especially.. they're so cute.. )
Definetly more interesting than robotwars,
but a little more violence wouldn't hurt.
(Nasty tackles, anyone? )
Go Team Sweden!
Yes Angela, many men are adversarially minded. Yes, it is a kind of mental illness.
The next step of a true scientist is to ask why. True scientists gather facts and try to make theories that fit those facts.
One interesting fact: In the U.S. and Britain, women are responsible for slightly more than half of the serious domestic violence. So, it is not as though only men have the problem of anger.
Another fact: Women in the U.S. culture are far more likely to hide their adversarial behavior. They are far more likely to adopt some rationalization to excuse their adversarial behavior.
Women in the U.S. are likely to feel superior to men. They use this idea to justify a lot of their own adversarial behavior.
I've written a book about a particular kind of adversarial behavior. My book is about how secret government agencies corrupt governments: What should be the Response to Violence?
(Note: I'm sitting in a RoboCup lab right now, so IMNSHO:)
:) There are a lot of strong teams in the league though so we'll have to see...
:) It sure did that for me, even though I've been programming them for several years.
I don't think the favorite is going to be Iran this year, but more likely the Phillips professional team, which won the German Open this year. That said, I wish people would realize there are 4 leagues, not just the middle size league, with different robots and different favorites in each. In the Sony Legged league, UNSW has dominated, though we came in second
In the small size, I'd say the favorites are last year's winner LuckyStar II from Singapore, and Big Red from Cornell University. FU-Fighters is also a pretty strong team. Our team (CMU) hopes to do a lot better this year in the small size league. We won in '97 and '98, but haven't done too well since then.
I don't know to much about the simulation league so I won't bother to comment. Finally, a personal plug: See a video from the vision system of a Sony legged robot here. It'll give you more respect for how hard a problem this is
...I do my AI Masters Thesis for that guy (Peter) and some friends of mine have been working on Priscilla. He has an enormous talent for getting publicity on everything he does. The smaller robot, Elvis, has been on national TV and on posters on public transportation here in Gothenburg, among other things. Everytime he starts on a new project, he manages to make the press interested and write an article about it. Perhaps more scientists should look into PR?
Opinions stated are mine and do not reflect those of the Illuminati
Mod this UP! +5 funny.
do videos of these robots playing exist? this sounds pretty cool. id like to see how agile they actually are!
spend money here
How does one compete in this tournament? It looks like all the teams have identical equipment: do the companies (like Sony) sponsor them?
Improvements are continually being made but, as Professor Nordin warned, "you don't want to give too much freedom to the robots as they will go crazy.
"You want the robots to have the ability to learn some of the things, but not do completely unexpected things."
Finally, it seems like someone has watched enough sci fi flicks to get the idea that autonomous machines are scary.
I read about advances in AI theory and think "Sheesh, haven't these guys ever heard of Skynet? HAL? Maximilian?" I read about artificial wombs and wonder if Aldous Huxley was ever required reading...
Even the Simpsons had it right:
"Itchy and Scratchy Land: the amusement park of the future where nothing can possi-blye go wrong. Er, possi_bly_ go wrong. Heh, that's the first thing that's ever gone wrong."
Frink - "You've got to listen to me. Elementary chaos theory tells us that all robots will eventually turn against their masters and run amok in an orgy of blood and kicking and the biting with the metal teeth and the hurting and shoving."
I wish I had a kryptonite cross, because then you could keep Dracula and Superman away.
We have a new omni design as well, and it looks like the finalized robot (with all the junk on it) is going to be pretty fast. We'll have to watch out for the FU-Fighters, I hear they have an 8m/s (unconfirnmes) kicker they used at the German open. Of course kicking speed was not their problem in the past, but still... This year is going to be fun.
:P (we didn't have ours yet). Are the new robots strong enough you can you stand on their covers like the 2000 robots?
P.S. It was no fair not showing us your new robots when we visited
I'm just wondering if the fans at the Robo-cup will riot like in regular soccer.
*News Flash*
Rioting robots caused a great deal of destruction at the IBM headquarters today, destroying servers and singing "We Are the Champions". Police were called in to restore order after several fires and much looting took place.
Hmm...I wonder if M$ has a team in the Robocup...imagine the possibilities.
"Drugs aren't the answer. Unless the question is, 'What isn't the answer?'"
I was at the RoboCup98 in paris, it will be interesting to see how things have changed. The match that I saw involved a few brick looking robots moving around in a random manner. It was the first time that I saw the Sony Dogs... Do the robots now wear boots?
Picture this, you're attending your teams playoffs and the judge makes a white-cane call. You voice your opinion and Miss Priscilla stands up 2 rows behind you, abrasively questioning your judgement! Time for the better part of valor??
There's a decent article on this linked from BBC News' front page.
Someone with mod points push the parent higer please, some incompetent loser can't tell 'Funny' from 'Flaimbait' (Probably confused because they start with the same letter).
"Oops, I always forget the purpose of competition is to divide people into winners and losers." - Hobbes
Robots should not be cute. Look at the Abio, it's a joke!
Robots should be complex, filled with pinch-points and aluminum cross-pieces; and with big stickers stickers labels 'DANGER'.
One future, two choices. Oppose them or let them destroy us.
Neat idea, but I think fundamentally flawed in that these robots are programmed by geeks. What the hell do they know about football? Have you seen those videos? All those damned Aibo's running after the ball... none of them hang back in defence or make a move for the box to wait for a cross in from the left.
They've got no width, their midfield is sorely lacking, defence is a shambles and the strikers have no pace.. Its like watching Scotland play.
Matt.
-- http://www.MarkWelch.com/ Pleasanton California
By 2050 I'll be way too old to play... I was hoping to buy a couple of these things to make up the numbers next time we're a few short for 5 a side :)
Tom Newton
Football is a relatively familiar domain (most children have played football), encourages them to work in a group and the goals (sorry - bad pun) are clear. This is in contrast to much computer and technology teaching dealing with abstract problems which is offputting to girls and those who are less numerate/logical.
Children (and adults) identify with their robot and get much more involved than with pure software projects.
Experiments with children show that girls as well as boys enjoy the activity of building their robots and watching them compete. A number of projects have allowed children to program robot teams at a very high level - making them concentrate on strategies of winning the game and not the mechanics.
Check out the RoboCup Junior site for more details. RoboCup Junior has now added other competitions, such as line-following and dance competitions for those people who do not wish to become involved with the football.
It's great fun, we're in the early stages of organising similar events here in Milton Keynes and there is plenty of interest from local schools.
Best wishes,
Mike.
Mod this down, he's just plugging his book.
I'm on the University of Virginia team, and we're one of two teams to qualify representing the US for the simulation league (which doesn't use real robots, and is thus a lot more fast paced). The other team being AT&T Research Labs.
We're actually in the process of looking for sponsors so that we can get to go to Japan for the competition.....
OK, are these robots REAL robots (ie. pre-programmed automatons) or the lame "robot wars" robots (ie. glorified RC cars)?
If it's the former, then great.. if it's the latter, don't call them robots, call the RC cars.
Somehow, seeing Priscilla rip off her jersey at the end of a match just won't be the same as seeing Brandi Chastain do it.
On the other hand, Priscilla could play the part of "Ally McBeal" if they ever revive that series...
Big mistake.
The book is free. It is entirely available on the Internet, and no other place.
The book merely shows that I think deeply about the subject of adversarial behavior. That's the reason I mentioned it.
You should have a look at the Aibo (four legged) leage.
They're extremely cute and I was surprised how well
they play.
The next season will have new rules. The game will be
played four on four (how fitting) instead of three on three,
the playing field will be enlarged, and the next generation
players are allowed to use wireless communication.
Elvis, which is the predecessor of Priscilla and the first and most famous robot from the lab was built by two friends of mine.
Marcus and Manne
I want an open source soccer league, so when someone scores the announcer screams
GPLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL!
and has nothing to do with the original subject.
The post is definitely on topic. The original poster, Angela, suggests that there are other ways to test robots than to arrange an adversarial test.
She is questioning the entire philosophy of robot development through adversarial games. She is saying that men (in the U.S. culture) are led to that kind of test of technology because of their psychological limitations, not because that is the best way to test.
I am a man, and I agree with her that men in the U.S. culture often have these psychological limitations. (Men from other cultures may have other limitations. Women also are often extremely limited by their cultures.) It is relevant to talk about what these psychological limitations are, since if you don't understand them, you cannot understand how much men in the U.S. culture are into a rut, and therefore might make a mistake in designing ways to develop and test technology.
This may be a subject too painful or difficult for many people to consider. Also, obviously, someone who is completely culture-bound does not realize he or she is culture-bound, so then that person would not be able to evaluate the relevance of this discussion.
Anonymous Coward's post is an example of the problem of inappropriately adversarial behavior, as are a lot of posts on Slashdot. People who comment on Slashdot often attack each other, and accentuate the negative, rather than cooperate, and accentuate the positive.
Often culture-bound men in the U.S. are completely unaware that the way they live life is not the only way. This is true of culture-bound people in general. Also, there is considerable support for the idea that women in the U.S. culture are more culture-bound than the men.
"women are responsible for slightly more than half of the serious domestic violence" should have been "women are responsible for initiating slightly more than half of the serious domestic violence". Somewhere I have a list of 15 research studies that show this is so.
You said, "In actuality she's trapped by her superiority because the only way she can excel is by serving inferior men."
I agree with this exactly.
One of the core problems for intelligent women in the U.S. culture is that it is likely they will not recognize that they are more intelligent than other people. A highly intelligent woman will often pick a man of average intelligence, and cause herself an enormous amount of grief.
UNSW (Uni of New South Wales, Aust). Always is. They have won every game they have competed in, with an average lead of 30 goals (no joke).
The difference is, they've seen the limitations of the dogs and kludged appropriately for the environment, while the other teams have used very generalised AI algortihms, that while very clever, are beyond the dog's processing power and give them no competitive advantage.
They used this technique in 2000, published the results, and no one learned and they won again in 2001. I'll back them again, even if the AI lecturer in charge is a bit of a tool.
The only reason they are staging this competition is that combat seems to be the only way that men express themselves or advance their knowledge. Isn't it enough that a robot can track, intercept and guide an object without having to turn it into a "battle" complete with winners and losers?
As a graduate student who has been working on robots in RoboCup for 4 years, I think you are missing the point. AI made many discoveries and developed many algorithms during the '70s by focussing on the challenge of making computers play chess. At the time, it was believed that if the problem of playing chess was solved we would be able to do almost anything we wanted with robots. Over time, it became very clear to roboticists that being able to play chess was not helping us build better robots. The RoboCup initiative was started in order to provide a new grand challenge for roboticists to work on and provide a common framework for comparisons. Soccer was chosen because it exemplifies many of the things that robots are traditionally bad at. It is an environment with multiple robots cooperating (and yes competing), lots of dynamic activity, difficult sensing problems, and challenging motor control problems. Basically, everything robots are bad at. Soccer was chosen over other alternatives simply because it is more popular around the world which in turn makes it easier to get funding. All of the research from soccer applies to many other domains that people really care about. The RoboCup organization has also recognized the need to do other things than soccer and also run a search and rescue domain at the competition each year which is equal in stature to all of the other leagues. The search and rescue problem is to find people trapped after natural or other disasters. This was started a couple of years ago.
You mean these movies.
I hear that cornell got cheated out of the title last year(small problem that showed up in the second to last round). Their robots were the best in the small league. The two best teams took 2nd and 3rd.
No, the rest of the world is watching Football and (occasionnally) American Football, Americans are the one watching Soccer and Football ;).
BTW, I am not a big Football fan so when my American boss talks about Football with somebody else I realize that he knows more about it than me, which always makes me laugh.
"The obvious mathematical breakthrough would be development of an easy way to factor large prime numbers." Bill Gates,
You'd think someone with a PhD could find a job at a laboratory that actually EXISTS.
Well, I'd better start packing for my trip to Las Vegas, New Mexico.
If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.
i'm sorry i'm a lazy dsylexic and my spelling on slashdot dosent really bother me, as long as you get the rought idea it is fine.
Burt "Out of my mind back in 5 minutes"
<anal> It isn't "rought", it's right! </anal> ;-)
I choose to remain celibate, like my father and his father before him.