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

Dont forget about R2

[aardwolf204]

R2D2 can now be a proud soccer mom

Re:Solution to Earlier problem.

[KrispyKringle]

It's probably relevant that some people believe that in order for an AI to acheive human-like awareness, it will have to perceive and experience the world as humans do. I personally don't subscribe to this; clearly, humans who are disabled or incapacitated and perceive the world from a wheelchair or bed are no less creative or intelligent than those who do not, but it is still an interesting point.

And even if AI software is not progressing because of wasted time on robots, those robots are still useful. Can you really picture an Aibo bought "in bulk" beating humans at soccer?

World Cup by 2050? Bah!

[Gefiltefish11]

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.