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AIBO Robot Dog Soccer Competition
BrianWCarver writes "The Washington Post has an article about teams of college students who program Sony AIBO Robotic Dogs to play soccer against each other in teams of four. While Beckham's job is not yet jeopardized, the cool thing from an AI perspective is that 'once the humans flip the switch, the robots are on their own.' They compete in RoboCup whose stated goal is to 'by the year 2050,
develop a team of fully autonomous humanoid robots
that can win against the human world soccer champion team.' RoboCup also has competitions with wheeled soccer bots (of varying designs) and have a humanoid league in which the Honda ASIMO appeared. The students in the above article are preparing for the four-legged international championship coming up in July of 2003 in Padua, Italy."
RoboCup 2003
At least the humanoid robots currently planned should be better looking in sports bras after a soccer game than some of the women currently playing professional soccer... *Shudder*.
"We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars." - Oscar Wilde
Teledildonics.
"The worst fad has been these stupid little robots," said Minsky.
They have the Internet on computers now?
In this earlier story we are told that AI is going no where due to the fact that graduate students are spending 3 years fixing broken robots instead of programming them.
I think if they give up those big robots, buy some Aibos in bulk, they can skip the repair stage, or at least shorten it quite a bit. Of course, if they get them at Circuit City, they can get the extended guarantee and not have to worry about repairs at all!!!
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Never call a man a fool; borrow from him.
there be several bikini clad beauties supporting the brazillian team or will I be wasting my time perving ... I mean watching this
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
R2D2 can now be a proud soccer mom
Im dreaming ofa big bndwdth, That can resist the
AI really has gone to the dogs.
Nothing fails quite like prayer.
Maybe it is more interesting than REAL soccer is. *ducks from flames thrown by soccer zealots*
There isn't a humaniod robocup league, there was just a demonstration of Asimo during the American Robocup Open.
When a humanoid soccer-playing machine can be developed such that a simple slide tackle (a legal maneuver) can snap limbs, the world cup is a sure bet. This will take far less than 47 years. In fact, drop the "humanoid" requirement and we could be there next year.
Sometimes there's an elegant beauty in simple brute force.
If these robots accidentally collide or tackle someone in soccer, forget about an instant red-card - it would probably crush bones.
Will the robots be primadonnas who crack during penalty kicks in extra time? Will they be programmed to roll around on the ground in a dramatic display of bad acting?
UNIX/Linux Consulting
Can they Bend it like Beckham? Very good movie, by the way.
Things you think are in the Constitution, but are not.
Robotic grass growing.
Couldn't they think of a game more exciting than Soccer? Or is this just the final indictment of this stultifying "sport" for people who can't afford a stick?
This is a very ambitious goal for the RoboCup team ... it will require great strides in so many areas: things like image recognition, mechanical and electrical engineering, and a severe amount of artificial intelligence breakthroughs. Soccer is not just a game that can be "solved" like checkers, tic-tac-toe, and awari are, and chess will be. It requires a much higher level of artificial intelligence (decision making, goal-based planning, etc.)
:)
It would be very neat to see something like this happen, and I know 47 years is a long time, but it's still an incredibly ambitious goal
the blood has stopped pumping, and he's left to decay
the me that you know is now made up of wires
'by the year 2050, develop a team of fully autonomous humanoid robots that can win against the human world soccer champion team.
So... do I have any volunteers? Of what I've heard, the team we're going to meet today is named "Bone Crunchers".
7. This will get the attention of some geeks; maybe enough to draw attention away from "Star Trek" and cause this dead franchise to finally go away.
6. The moment when the goaltender says "Danger, Will Robinson!" is priceless.
5. Lots of fun game play alterations when robot bones are tossed onto the field.
4. Only a matter of time before they allow Taz-Bot, Die-Sector, Vlad, and the rest of our Battlebots friends onto the field. Then the fun really starts.
3. Gets rid of the problem of urination on the field that is plagues any event with real soccer players or real dogs.
2. Americans love dogs. Americans hate soccer. So, this is likely to move soccer from #74 to #63 on the ESPN-2 ratings.
1. Two words: Mecha-Aibo
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
then they're serving us our coffee, and before you know it, they won't open the pod bay doors, they've turned Skynet against us, they've completely commandeered the Forbin Project, and Brent Spiner is being paid more than anyone except Patrick Stewart. When will we learn?!?
These guys are following a long tradition (in technology years) of soccer-playing robots.
From this article:
"This year's challenge was to build soccer-playing robots. An unfortunate choice perhaps, given the possibility of confusion between RoboCon and RoboCup. The latter is another Japanese-inspired initiative, whose goal is also to build soccer-playing robots (Australasian, 30 August 1997). But there are clear differences between the two. RoboCon is based on mechanics, whereas RoboCup is more electrical, being mainly to do with communications and software. Also RoboCup robots are completely autonomous. (RoboCon robots) are remote controlled."
Suicide Booth: You are now dead! Thank you for using Stop and Drop, America's favorite since 2008.
[The team]...changed the "confidence level" before shooting. Instead of looking for a perfect opportunity, the dogs would shoot faster and more often. It worked.
So what they've done is end up with looser play and lower hit rates as opposed to higher accuracy. That's fine for winning a soccer tournament (and please understand -- I'm by no means discounting the incredible coolness of what's going on here), but how would this translate in the real world?
Here's something even more cool to think about...just imagine if you could program the dogs to adapt their style of play over the course of the tournament (learning) and then observe if they "naturally" tended to this style of play in any case.
We just heard from on high (ahem, hello Mr. Minsky) that this whole exercise is pointless and stupid!
Are they anagrams?
... this was going on (in part) upstairs from a lecture by none other than Neal Stephenson.
Sweet day at CMU, I'd say.
How else do you hold an "AI robot" contest? Humans mucking about with the things is called cheating. If they get disabled or whatnot, of COURSE they should be left alone.
I hate robot/AI contests which are dumbed down- watch a robot 'soccer' match, and often you'll see volunteers putting robots back on the right course when they've boxed themselves into a corner and such...like the programmers/designers shouldn't have to be 'troubled' by such things as getting trapped by two walls, or all the contestants have such miserably designed/programmed robots that they fail left and right.. Everyone wants to work on the "chase the ball" routine, but nobody wants to work on the un-sexy, nuts-and-bolts, "keep from smacking the wall and staying there" routine.
In the real world, there are no magical hands that pick you up and flip you around and set you going with a pat on the CPU...and what every robotics person calls "simplifying the problem", I call "cheating". This constant cheating has led to a field which is incapable, still, of dealing with the simplest problems but can solve these wonderful complex ones. The result is a lot of electromechanical garbage that's simply unuseable in anything even remotely resembling the real world.
Please help metamoderate.
Only a real geek would take the time to automate an athletic event.
1. Create robotic soccer dogs
2. Replace human athletes
3. ?
4. Profit!
Actually I've heard from friends that in one of the competitions the CMU robots were spinning so sharply they were breaking other robots. (this was not the ABOIs, there are a number of entries in robotic soccer).
Sadly they do not yet have red cards written into the rules.
10. Drooldroids
9. Dyna-Mutts
8. Cyberpups
7. WinterMalaMutes
6. FIDO-Net
5. 3L33T T3RR313R's
4. The B-9 K-9's
3. See-Threepoodle's
2. The Borgzoi
1. BITches
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
How soon will we see the "Robot-Coupe," (Fr. kitchen appliance, pron. Ro-bo-Koop') in which the losing team gets tossed into a Cuisinart?
Think, write, think, edit, think...then post.
about AI going nowhere. Something to do with Graduate students wasting time soldering and repairing robots . . .
"Teachers leave us kids alone
...would AIBOs be _vastly_ more interesting if they had weapons? :)
Something more along the lines of 'AMEE' from that awful movie "Red Planet," perhaps...only not psychotic.
weird how there was a different slashdot article today saying how instead of working on AI people where wasting time making little robots, then lo and behold, here is an article about stupid little robots!!
Manipulate the moderator system! Mod someone as "overrated" today.
Why can't people agree to use that name in international context, and call the american game "american football", although in it the ball is moved around (AFAIK) mostly with hands?
What's next? Robot humans sniffing each other's butts and humping in the street?
You've never seen a Linux Users Group have you?
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
Only in America is it called soccer.
It's football for christsake!
It is called soccer.
Look at it this way. There are several different sports already competing for the word "football" (and most of them are not soccer!) It is quite confusing to try and also call soccer "football".
In contrast, there is only one soccer, so why not call it that?
That leaves more time for the all-important drinking of beer!
I'd like to see an autonomous class in addition to the RC controlled!!
"Only in America is it called soccer. It's football for christsake!"
If someone says soccer, you know what it is. If someone says football, you have to find out which of the several different sports they are referring to.
Americans may not like soccer, but at least they have a better less-confusing name for it.
This competition is similar, although in my opinion has more engineering merit. I spent a year developing a team for the 2002 Korea competition but unfortunately we were beset with a poor budget (NZ$5000 - things got tight) and outrageous shipping delays (6 months for motors) and never completed the team.
It was interesting because not only did you have to develop the AI to allow the robots to 'play the game', but you also had to develop a computer colour vision system to 'read' the state of play, as well as a suitable control system for the robots themselves. The use of H bridges and avoiding burning out the motors or circuitry when suddenly reversing direction brought in some interesting research from the university's mechanical engineering department. Wireless comms also came into it, with a one-way FM link. A great project bringing many different areas into one 'arena'.
FIRA has several different classes of competition (we were working towards Mirosot) including a 'simulation only' class.
develop a team of fully autonomous humanoid robots that can win against the human world soccer champion team.
Sure they'll need some basic programming to be made autonomous but judging from a lot of what I've seen of professional soccer these robots should be able to give a human team a pretty good game!
I stole this Sig
yes you win free stuff
hooba flaz rarra ra er ijdsa adfji stuff pork eat less less more more huh what you say captain how are you gentlemen
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HEIL SLASHDOT to the max
bagel agel angel linux to the max woop woop
"just as ridiculous as an American baseball contest being called "The World Series" as if anybody else cared"
You assume that America cares much about it in the first place.
After reading the headline, I thought this article was about people playing soccer with the AIBO robot dogs - in my opinion, a far more fun sport than robot dogs playing soccer with soccer balls.
"these robots [robotwars.com] should be able to give a human team a pretty good game!"
You call that a game? Your first problem is when the whirling saw punctures the ball rather than move it anywhere.
If they can get past this, there are rules against smashing shins and sawing feet off.
Within minutes, all of the robot team would be ejected from the game, except for the useless ineffectual "Buddy don't Play in the Street" and Tentamushi.
...we have algorithms.
My son and I went out for the day on Sunday to see what was up. The Aibos were a hoot to watch, but nothing to write home about in terms of playing soccer. They had trouble keeping track of themselves and the ball at the same time.
According to the lead researcher (the lady in the left in the picture), the dogs communicate with each other on their position and the location of the ball. You could see some cooperation in their actions, but not much. They would sometimes spend some time deciding who would go for the ball, but I never saw anything like a coordinated pass on a breakaway.
They don't yet track the opposing players, and got too easily hung up on obstructions, like the corner of the goal. A dribbling player would stop every couple of steps, look around to check the location of the corner posts, and lose the ball.
In terms of soccer play, the smaller, wheeled league was much more impressive. The single camera gave the team a comprehensive view of the field, ball, and opposing players. Every robot had an arrangement of colored dots on top to identify the player and it's position. The players were fast (probably a 1-2 second dash from one end of the field to the other), and were effective at dribbling (with a spinning bar that spun the golf ball toward the robot) and shooting (with a kick bar).
There was not a lot of depth to the competition. The 3rd-4th place consolation game consisted of a whole lot of nothing going on. Hopefully, more schools will get involved for future research.
People who disagree with you are not automatically evil, greedy, or stupid.
What if those soccer robots develope their own conscience, start killing the humans, and send a robot back to the past to kill the leader of the human resistance?
1f u c4n r34d th1s u r34lly n33d t0 g37 l41d
Isn't this a waste of valuable AI grad student time?
Beep beep.
that minsky was complaining about.
The couple of robot battle shows Comedy Central and Discovery ran a while back were boring because the robots weren't autonomous. Any hardware monkey can make a remote controlled killing machine. Autonomous ones would be way more interesting! And if they just happened to go mad and start killing the audience, well that just makes it more interesting, doesn't it?
I think I must be channeling Professor Farnsworth...
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Dupe! Dupe! Dupe! Dupe! Dupe! Dupe!
Here.
I should have looked into this before trying to play soccer with my pet dog (living flesh & blood) and consequently breaking his leg. Poor thing now has his front leg wrapped up with a stint and does a goose leg walk. My dog, Doc loves to chase after the soccer ball. So my wife and I played keep-away from the dog Saturday. It was a glorious day, warm sunlight and a faint cool breeze. So my wife lobs the ball up in the air to my left, I take about six quick strides to the ball as it is still in the air, step down, planting my right foot down on the dog's front leg, my left foot out in the swinging to strike the ball. Poor thing yelps out as I stumble and bumble trying not to crush the 10 lb. Dog. Maybe I should have waited 5 more days to consider using an AIBO to play soccer with Doc.
I hate all sigs, even this one.
YOU FUCK - thanks for posting the article twice you goddamn ignorant SOB - you fat fuck of a fag - I hate you and will shoot you in the head with my FUCKING ASCII TEXT BITCH!
I loved that scene in Robocop where the sportscaster was talking about the final two teams in the world series: The Tokyo Samurai, and the Toronto Blue Jays. Americans kicked out of their own sport. - It was great!
"I'm not impatient. I just hate waiting." - My Dad
For those of you who would like to do research with real world data, but don't want to spend time actually building the robot before you can use it - the Aibo is a great platform.
There's a free software development kit from Sony as well as an application framework to get you jump-started.
I used to compete in RoboCup (for 3 years with Cornell) in the Small Size league. I believe the writer of this post is referring to small size (f-180) bots when he uses the term "wheeled soccer robots." I'd like to point out that very few small size robots use two wheels to move around any more. Most use omni-directional drive which consists of a number of spinning balls on the bottom of the robot which allow them to move in any direction at any time. This is very little to do with this post and might be seen as a rant, but since I was on the Cornell team when we brought this different design to competition first I feel a little dedicated to point out that wheeled robots are old school, omni designs now rule the playing field. :)
Will Stokes Album Shaper http://albumshaper.sf.net
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First the "Making of" specials, then the beer commercials, then the anime stuff, then the "philosophy of" crap then all the slashdot AI articles, then the...
Oh, you mean this isn't another Matrix thing? Sorry. My bad.
This AIBO competition has been going on for a few years now. I remember reading about it a few RoboCups back. The coolest thing at the time was to read that the team that eventually won the AIBO competition didn't just win by programming the best path algorithms and ball recognition algorithms, they went all out and re-programmed the core AIBO mechanics to make it 'walk' differently in a way that helped it manouvre more cleverly and outpace it's competition to the ball.
Very cool stuff.
I wonder if we will see an advanced Aibo tomorrow. Maybe Aibo is going to try to bite Neo for stepping on its tail.
can it fuck a mexican prostitute?
and serves drinks at half time? R2D2?
As long as the robots can't do the irrational things human players do, it'll be a sterile thing. An elbow at the wrong place, a late tackle or similar things can add some charge to a game. Anyone who doesn't believe that should have seen last night's CL game between Inter and AC Milan. The emotinal factor made it a better game.
Look, I can take a tank out onto the playing field right now, and I doubt that any players are going to get very far with the ball.
My point; of course we have machines that can outperform humans, had em for a while. But they can only outperform us within very limited criteria.
for instance, a backhoe can dig much faster than I, but I don't think it can dig as precisely as I can. A car can go much faster than me, but not up a very steep rock face.
so I think the point of a robotic soccer game is to show a machine with many of the abilities of a human. Also, I think any machine playing soccer against a human must have at least legs. And currently there are not very many dexterious machines with legs.
I really really want a dog sled pulled by like a hundred Aibos. They would look so cute in snow shoes.
blah blah blah
As previously reported on Slashdot, Sony has opened up the API for the AIBO, and it can be programmed in C++. My lab has created an application development framework for the AIBO called Tekkotsu that we think people will find helpful. The code is open source and GPLed. Visit Tekkotsu.org for an overview, downloads, demos, and documentation.
Honda ASIMO-V should be really cool.
I feel fantastic, and I'm still alive.
I don't know about Brazillians, but we can stick to
the language. When I was there in '01 there was a
Portugese team. Those girls did not need to be bikini
clad to catch my intrest.
Reasonably interesting stuff, granted, but the really funny bit was the big-screen demo movie they had running on the stand. A little robot built out of some of these things and a controller board dragging a big pink Aibo ball around, taunting, and running rings around a Sony Aibo! The Aibo didn't stand a chance, this thing was kicking it's arse!
I always wanted an Aibo until I saw one in action. It was nothing but a stupid shit-fer-brains toy - you'd need a *real* imagination to consider that to be a pet.
I find your ideas intriguing and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.
Robots are already like real soccer players. If things
don't go exactly there way they tend to either sulk,
are start spinning around and running about
for no reason.
On another front, there is a rule in the small sized league
against one robot pushing another. So if you can get
your own robot to roll back when in contact with
another, you will get a free kick. For all I know there
are several teams out there which have implemented
such dive code but aren't letting on.
yukkkkkk!
US football (soccer) players urinate on the pitch during games? "(Gets rid of the problem of urination on the field that is plagues any event with real soccer players )"... No wonder football (soccer) isn't popular in the USA. I never understood why the beautiful game wasn't as popular there as in the rest of the world, now I understand. Uggg.
Not only that, Bender drank all my beer!
It seems Sony is hosting an OPEN-R/AIBO programming seminar, and it's free to the public!
Lookee here.