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."

Comments

Memo, for distribution

[CausticWindow]

We propose a new technology to combat the "First Post" phenomenon.

This memo provides information for the Internet community. It does not specify an Internet standard of any kind. Distribution of this memo is unlimited.

Table of Contents

1. Definitions .............
2. Technology ..............
3. Credits .................

1. Definitions

A "First Post" is the very first post (generally on the top of the page) in an online digital bulletin board system. The phenomenon were first witnessed on the now defunct Bitnet, but has had a renessaince on recent popular websites. In certain communities it has become a sport to claim as many "First Posts" as possible. The difficulty lies in beating hordes of other users, who also try to claim "First Post", much to the annoyance of legitimate users. While the "First Post" doesn't normally occupy much webpage real estate, several variants with page widening technology have surfaced from time to time.

2. Technology

Not much have been done to combat this nuisance in the past. Several bulletin board systems have enabled power users, or moderators, to rate and remove the posts in question. This however, is just a reactive measure. Nothing has been done to remove the very source of the annoying "First Post". We propose a proactive measure that would once and for all remove the much dreaded "First Post" problem.

At the core of this technology, would be a random number generator. We propose to use a stochastic generator, utilizing primitive trinomials and Monte Carlo sequencing. Alternatively, a hardware random generator may be used.

We define a sequence of posts as one post sequentially numbered after another. With relative numbering, the first post is post number one. Assuming that there will be more than n-1 posts in a certain discussion, we number each subsequent post 1,2.. n. We call the number n, the random threshold. Depending on the popularity of a discussion, n may or may not be quite large. We propose a model for estimating the number of posts attached to a certain subject by Bayesian analysis on the body of the article in question.

Given an estimate of the randhom threshold, n, and the random generator one proceeds to generate every page of the forum dynamically. For every successive generation, the random generator is invoked to scramble the order of the first n posts. This will effectively kill off any illusion of "First Post", as post number one might be translated to post numer 2,..n.

If the number of posts are low, this technique might not be optimal, but then one would expect the occurences of "First Posts" to be much lower also.

3. Credits

The idea for this technology came from doctor Ida Lupino of the Texan Institute of Technology, on the annual "Digital Bulletin Board development" conference, held each year in Puerto Rico. This memo was written by the esteemed Shifter Potts in close cooperation with Becky Uchif Outs.

Re:Memo, for distribution

[Anonymous Coward]

3. You mena IL TIT?

But yes, good idea FP

woop

[Anonymous Coward]

what do "bad moral" and "rob malda" have in common? a prize to the first to deduce! ~ trollk0re

Re:woop

[Anonymous Coward]

omgomgomgomgomg

Yes but...

[Mr. Sketch]

Can they Bend it like Beckham? Very good movie, by the way.

OMG, really

[Anonymous Coward]

How stupid does one have to be to waste moderation points on that shit?

HELLO EVERYBODY

[Anonymous Coward]

I've just poured Natalie Portman and Carrie Fisher down my pants. Where they are currently making a love nest.

MOD DIS MUDDAFUCKA UP INSIGHTFUL

[Anonymous Coward]

See subject. Did you know that BSD is gh3y? True.

SOCKER IS GHEY

[Anonymous Coward]

Noone likes socker. It's ghey with a capital GHEY.

Fucking stupid eurotrash waste of time.

Go ahead and mod me down, I'm not telling you anything you didn't already know.