RoboCup 2003

Kylose Boondoggler writes "Sony AIBOs play soccer against each other in the American Open 2003, hosted by Carnegie Mellon University in preparation for RoboCup '03. Teams from all over North and South America (including teams from Georgia Tech, Cornell, and UPenn) will compete in various leagues from soccer-playing AIBO to pure computer simulations. Local newspaper coverage is provided by The Tartan. Honda's ASIMO will also make an appearance along with rescue robots constructed by Carnegie Mellon."

Comments

Robotic DOGS

[Snover]

Does this mean that they'll all go around sniffing each-other's butts?

Re:Robotic DOGS

[fjordboy]

After watching the first video on this site, there is definite footage of two aibo's on the same team (same color) with one aibo's head directly under the "tail" of the other aibo. I don't know if they were going for realism and trying to have the dogs sniff each other, or if it was just a coincidence, but the effect is hilarious.

Re:When are they going to make driving robots

[sirius_bbr]

Driving a car in an unlimited and mostly uncontrolled environment is a much more complex task than navigating a robot (or team of -) in a more or less controlled and certainly a limited environment. However, a lot of research that is done in the robotsoccer field (computer vision, anticipating to unexpected situations), may be very useful to realize autonomous vehicle guidance in the (probably not very near) future.

Soccer wrong game, chasing email spammers better

[corebreech]

Since dogs traditionally chase mailmen, I think this would be more fitting.

Just replace the people who deliver mail with the people who spam us with e-mail, and you have a smash hit!

You'd need to give Aibo some teeth though, and I've got some old and rusty Exacto-knife blades that would fit the bill perfectly.

videos

[fjordboy]

There are a bunch of videos here, they appear to be of varying sizes...though the first one I started downloading is still going strong and just passed the 42 meg mark...actually, right as I was writing this it stopped, so it is 43 megs...so the videos are big and long (hopefully). Enjoy.

Re:When are they going to make driving robots

[eizan]

there are some great papers on this site that might be of interest

http://www.ri.cmu.edu/projects/project_160.html

alan alda

[Anonymous Coward]

Alan alda has a great show about aibo soccer in his scientific frontier show.

Try High School Robotics

[pkiesel]

Okay, it can't compete with Aibos for cute (or irony), but there is a much more exciting way to go: FIRST high school robotics (http://www.usfirst.org/), an international competition for high school robotics teams.

These are 130 lb robots with between one and two horsepower, running both autonomously and with radio control, and playing a two against two timed game. The teams have six weeks in Jan. & Feb. to design, build, program, test and ship their robots. They start with a kit of parts (motors, robot controller, misc. hardware) and build their robots for a game which changes every year.

There are 800 teams in the US, Canada, the UK and Brazil and 23 regional competitions, plus the championship event which was held in the Reliant Stadium in Houston last month. We used the Astrodome for our pits!

As a mentor and parent of two team members (http://www.cybersonics.org/), I can tell you this is a blast! I encourage everyone to take a look at it and think about getting involved. Most teams are always looking for mentors and new teams are starting every year.

Simulation League

[ibcmax]

Ahh Robocup - the memories come flooding back. When I was but a uni sudent at Curtin Uni, one particularly inventive AI lecturer gave us the task of designing and implementing a Robocup software simulation client. Apart from being very instructive and worthwhile, it was absolutely great fun. People strove to create the best clients to beat fellow classmates, and implemented players who would clear the ball if it got too close to their own goal, algorithms to pass the ball effectively, and a stamina management system to help players conserve energy instead of sprinting everywhere and running out of puff.

If there are any AI Uni Lecturers among the slashdot readership, take my advice as a former student and do something like this for your students as an assignment - it will be one of the best they ever do. The server software and API documentation is free to download, and players may be implemented in amy language you want.

How about a slashdot effort for next years cup? :)

RoboCup Photos

[agusus]

For those interested, I'm on the CMU Simulation league team, and I have about 30 photos from the American Open:

Photos

And as an update to the original post, the American Open concluded about an hour ago, with the CMU AIBO team winning the finals in competition against Cornell.

Re:When are they going to make driving robots

[heli0]

That is exactly what they are attempting here.

"The challenge is to build an autonomous vehicle which can 'navigate on its own over a 250-mile desert course in less than 10 hours.' from L.A. to Vegas, 'without external communication or human control.'"

Former competitor of RoboCup 2002

[mattis_f]

Well, it's interesting to see that this is starting to pick up in the US as well. Last year we (we = project team from Uppsala University, Sweden) competed in the RoboCup 2002, which was being held in Japan at the same time as the 'normal' soccer world cup. It was an extremely interesting experience and the exhibition floor and competitions were on the floor of a huge indoor baseball arena (maximum capacity: 50 000). During three days of competition about 100,000 people showed up.

It's a shame you don't have what I consider the most interesting leagues though - the middle size and the humanoid league. Those are the ones that require most work and has least competitors, so it might be hard to get a full league I suppose. Middle size robots have everything onboard and have to do everything by themselves. There are quite a few teams in Europe and Japan, coming from universities but also some companies (Philips, dutch home electronics company, had a good middle size team last year.)

Further, FYI, Aibo robots are programmed by the team, so the kind of tricks and cool stuff they do depends on who programmed them (and how much time they had... :-) ). Teams who compete in this league obviously don't have to construct the hardware which might be nice for all the software guys out there. In most other leagues you build the robots from standard off-the-shelf components.

There is also a German Open which is being held in Paderborn, Germany, sometime soon. Further, the world championships, the real RoboCup 2003, is being held in Padua, Italy in the summer. This is from the top of my head, I don't have any URL:s, but I'm sure they can be found with a quick search.

Asimo the puppet

[Ghetto_D]

I think robotic sports competitions are a great idea. It helps younger generations get interested in technology, and definately spawns some creative innovations. I watched a special on TechTV recently ... http://www.techtv.com/news/shownotes/story/0,24195 ,3425334,00.html one thing that surprised me was the segment on Asimo. They commented that there are multiple engineers controlling Asimo while he is on stage. With all of the money and research Honda has put into this robot, why does it still require mutliple humans to control it?