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Robocup 2002 Now Underway
ChenLing writes "Forget small robots on wheels playing soccer...193 teams from 30 countries have built androids to play soccer at 'RoboCup'. Although as the article says, it will be a while before we can pit androids vs humans on the same field....." Our previous story has background links and information about the contest.
Although as the article says, it will be a while before we can pit androids vs humans on the same field
Wouldn't want to get tackled by one of those.
I guess there wouldn't be as much faking on the field then...
Ich werde nie wieder denken
Who wants to watch robots play soccer?
The RoboCup people have made it their goal to create a team of robots tht will beat the world cup winner by 2050. Pretty amazing stuff.
There's no "I" in Linux.. err..
Ok, did anybody else read that as 'robocop 2002' and cringe?
I wonder if there is a Zlatko Zahobot or a Keanebot that stomps off the field calling the coach a "Gearhead now and a gearhead when he was a player." Do you give the players punchcards instead of booking them the old fashioned way? What about hooliganbots that trash serverrooms after England gets whipped by the Faroe Islands?
Comparing it to Windows will be a moot point, since El Dorado is going to have a 40% larger code base than XP.
Was I the only one that thought this was the latest Ronco invention?
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I'm on the University of Virginia team, and we're in the simulation league. We don't have physical robots. The result is we don't have to spend the effort on mechanical concerns and image recognition, and we get to devote more effort to the AI aspect of the competition. In the simulation league, the robots DO get tired, they do miss shots, and they have imperfect information. The idea is to remove all physical considerations from play and have them win on intellect alone. The robots being used in competition are no where near the level required to beat a world cup team, but I imagine that once they get close, these "humanizing" factors will be added to keep the match fair. At the current rate of development, I expect this to be well before 2050.
I didn't realize robotics had gotten anywhere near this point. I think a lot of people underestimate exactly how hard it is to get a robot to do something like, for example, find a ball. Now these robots are walking (a significant challenge, from my experience... :) kicking a ball, and interacting with each other? Pretty incredible.
I wonder how sophisticated these humanoids can get. Can they pick themselves up if they stumble? Can they figure out whether another robot is on their team? Can they pass? The article seems to imply that at this point, they're not that much more than glorified mechanical penalty kickers.
Let's get this technology implemented for Doom.
Then again...
Rule #1 -- Politics always trumps technology.
Or, if the programers were smart, to only commit them when the ref was looking away
if (theirscore - ourscore > 3)
{
robot1.fall_down_and_cry_like_an_argentinian();
while(robot2.check_refs_paying attention() = true)continue;
robot2.break_other_teams_forwards_shin();
}
Is programing at the point where it can truly emulate soccer? Will they shoot the losing goalie? Will the Italian league fire the Korean when he scores against the Italian national team? Most importantly, will they riot?
Click here or here.
Not just another robot, consider this:
The robots could never win because they could never be programed to "play dirty". Think about it, when a human does something underhanded to hurt another player you think "That guy is a dick" but it is understandable because he is human and so are you.
If a robot did this, there would be serious reprecussions to both the robot, and the designer. No one would accept a robot that behaved this way, therefore the humans will alway have a considerable advantage.
In the same vein, this is why it is especially tough to build automated drivers for automobiles. With a human bus driver, an accident seems like an inevitable fact of life. To make a robotic driver with human intelligence requires it to also have human faults. It might, late at night, mistake the road as going off in the wrong direction and crash the car. The problem is, for a robot to do this is unacceptable.
This is why really building a robot is so difficult: because of people's relation to them.
People want robots to have the intelligence of people, while requiring the reliability of machines.
Is this possible? Probably, but it is most likely very difficult. Probably even more difficult than simply creating a AI "as good" as a persons.
---Lane
It could happen! Check this out!
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recently i watched a PBS (i think) special on the Robocup...must've been from 2001, if the 2002 one is going on right now...it was hosted by Alan Alda...anyway, it was really interesting...
some of the things the teams could do were amazing...while most teams basically used "brute force" to push the ball into the net, there were some advanced teams that could actually recognize teammates and pass the ball to them...that was pretty impressive...the had kind of a pinball type flipper kinda thing that would poke out near their feet...
another cool thing was that some of the robots (i think it was the same team that could do the advanced passing) could actually "trap" the ball...they had a spinning bar on their front, so as the ball came to them, the bar would spin, and they could keep control of it, by basically continually spinnning the ball towards themselves...kinda like a tread mill...
another progressive idea (and i'm sure the slashdot/open source community will appreciate this) was that after the competition is over, all of the teams are required to share their source code, so everyone starts on the same plane for the next year of research... it's really a cool speical if you can catch it while you're flipping the channels sometime....
"Facts are meaningless. You could use facts to prove anything that's even remotely true." - Homer Simpson
The motivation behind these human-shaped robots is not at all the same as the motivation of the wheeled robot soccer tournaments. The whole point behind the small robots on wheels is to learn and improve on teamplay and improvisional skills from a software level, not in mimicry of physical ability. These approaches to robot design aren't competitive, they are parallel in the pursuit of higher functionality.
Actually they call it football because you use your FEET which sounds more like a game played with your feet.
1) A game where you kick a ball and use almost nothing but your feet
2) A gamer where you hold a ball and run and try not to get tackled my large sweaty men
This must be Thursday, I never could get the hang of Thursdays.
I'd like to see a comparison of this year's robots vs. last year's. What new features are being tried out, how much closer are we to the dream of beating the best humans, and what strategies are being rethought?
Everyone always talks about how fast technology like this advances, but when I watch the little Aibo's fight it out, it always looks the same to me. Can anyone provide insight?
why is the loss historic? i think it was historic that the US made it to the round of 8, sure...but Germany was pretty heavily favored in the game...it would have been a huge upset if the US won...but they were expected to lose...
had they won, it would have been "historic"...not quite the level of US Hockey over Russia in 1980...but still "historic"...
"Facts are meaningless. You could use facts to prove anything that's even remotely true." - Homer Simpson
1. A robot may not score on his team's own goal, or, through inaction, allow his team's goal to be scored upon.
2. A robot must obey the orders given it by coaches except where such orders would conflict the First Law.
3. A robot must protect its own field position as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.
I nominate yesterday's robot! A stadium full of these and I think I'll stay home and watch the game on Pay-per-View.
We'll just put a robots.txt file in our goal! :-)
To be quite honest, the Germans are the ones that looked bad after this game.
Already the press is saying how the US pretty much dominated most of the game, and even ex-German players are criticizing the poor performance of the German team.
Historically, Germany is a "soccer" super-power and has won the World Cup more than one time.
The US is a "novice" when it comes to this sport, and in the last World Cup we finished dead last out of all the countries.
Support for soccer in Germany is great, even the president of that country was photographed watching the game.
So to be quite honest, I'm proud of a 1-0 loss against Germany (let's not talk about the obvious goal & penalty not counted by the referee).
Germans expected to beat the US like they did Saudi Arabia. All they came up with was a "1-0" win. At this rate, the current German team has very little chances of beating Brazil, Spain or even Senegal/Turkey.
- sigs are for wimps.
Use Gaak, the escaped robot from the UK, to perform soccer tricks the other bots haven't discovered yet?
So rise up, all ye lost ones, as one, we'll claw the clouds.
The part of the article I found amusing was the end where they assure us that even if robots one day can beat us at soccer that we should still be proud, because building the robots was a human endeavor.
Almost every article relating to some type of AI has to get those little insecurity-based digs in. It reminds me of all those Star Trek episodes where human beings are held up as the treasures of the universe.
It's very telling and sad, really. We can't just celebrate achievement for its own sake, we have to tie it to our family, our school, our nation, or (at very least) our species.
Unfortunately, I don't think that we'll lose that immaturity any time soon.
Why are you letting these clowns ruin our country?
Read this then go look in the mirror and realize how much of a fool you just made of yourself.
Just because you post AC doesn't mean you're not a moron.
If you don't want to repeat the past, stop living in it.
Didn't Gary Linneker once say something like :'Soccer is a game of eleven against eleven, and in the end, the Germans win'?
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Ok, I'm not there but as far as I know android team v. android team is not being done this year, contrary to what the article is insinuating.
According to the Official 2002 Robocup Humanoid League Draft Rule there are three catagories of Current and Future events with several sub-sections. Here is the run down.
* Standing Still on One Leg
* Humanoid walk - out from one end, around a pylon and back,
* Shoot - where the bot is able to shoot on the goal and get it in.
* Penalty Shootout
* 1v1, 2v2, 3v3 Soccer
* Freestyle - Five minutes of judged performance art.
According to the organizers they are just hoping to get some teams to try the first few! And as you can see the competitive playing of soccer is waaaaaaaaaaaaaaayy down the list and probably aren't even being attempted this 'Cup. Sure, those nice posed shots of those Sony bots look nice, but those aren't competition pictures. Sure, the information on the Official Robocup site is sparse, but don't you think that they would have some big announcement if it did?
This article from MSNBC is confusing one league (the humanoids) with another (the non-humanoid) in an attempt to create hype. Personally I think Robocup deserves it, but not by misconstruing what's going on.
The best thing about the Robocup site is that you can actually watch the replays of the simulation games with Flash. Pretty sweet.
What is music when you despise all sound?
Who wants to watch soccer? Why can't the robots play proper football instead?
Oh, I forgot, they haven't got motors strong enough to carry all that wussy 'protection' gear, and robots are too smart to waste waiting 5 minutes between every play.
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Don't think this is a high scoring slaughter. They're using binary.
The Cornell Big Red team is the one that introduced the spinning bar (dribbler), omnidirectional travel, and passing. You have to see these robots in action to appreciate how well this works.
Our current robots can trap the ball and move from one end of the field to the other, backwards in under a second. The ball looks like it is stuck to the robot! On top of just pulling the ball in, they also have a transverse dribbler so that the robot can also move side to side without loosing the ball at the end of the roller.
Most teams are pure CS majors, but Cornell uses a team of Mech. E., EE, and CS students. By doing this, the team can concentrate on developing more innovative robots with new features to better play the game.
Oh, and brute-force is forbidden by the rules. A ref. is supposed to assess penalties against robots that hit into the opposing team's players.
-- Len
I'm to assume I'll have to wait years for German robots to stop winning?
This wasn't just plain terrible, this was fancy terrible. This was terrible with raisins in it. - Dorothy Parker
Dude, this is Slashdot. OF COURSE WE DO!
So what does a Robocup look like, exactly? And why do the robots need to wear a cup? Do they have Roboballs?
--
"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
In Robot wars series 5 the robots have evolved quite a bit - the most effective weapons being powerful pincers (aka. Razor, which can cream 95% of the robots out there... it normally only loses if it gets driven into a pit or something) and flippers (Chaos II, which likes to finish rounds by throwing the robots [which weigh about half a ton] clean out of the ring, and WheelyBigCheese, which recently threw a robot from the middle of the ring, through the air and out of the ring, where it nearly demolished the protective barriers).
The weedy Axes and stuff are generally only used by newbies - they're pretty useless.
Mind you, I wouldn't like to meet any of those things in a dark alley...
Robot Wars has flamethrowers btw. - both the house robots and the ring itself have them. They're not terribly effective against a titanium shell.
Tacnukes would vapourise the judges, so it'd probably be declared a draw...
...today's battery technologies.
Would you watch a 90 minutes game only with 60 battery recharge breaks?
Here you can find the scores of last years competitions.
As you can see, UNSW totally flattened everyone.