qengho writes "Vstone's programmable and automonous humanoid robot Robovie-M can play soccer, throw a ball both over- and underhand, and even demonstrate shame (over a missed shot, presumably). Lots of QuickTime movies of the bot in action."
187 comments
Where are the
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Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 5, Funny
Hot robot soccer moms?
Re:Where are the
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Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
Little Robots Play Soccer
Posted by michael on Saturday April 03, @02:33PM from the look-out-pele dept. qengho writes "Vstone's programmable and automonous humanoid robot Robovie-M can play soccer, throw a ball both over- and underhand, and even demonstrate shame (over a missed shot, presumably). Lots of QuickTime movies of the bot in action."
( Read More... | 44 of 69 comments ) Science: NASA Gravity Probe Set for Launch
Posted by michael on Saturday April 03, @01:35PM from the weighty-concepts dept. The Real Dr John writes "NASA announced yesterday that its longest running program, Gravity Probe B, was ready and scheduled for launch on April 17th. The project has taken 44 years to complete, at a cost of approximately $700 million. The reason for the high cost is that the probe contains the most sensitive gyroscopic equipment ever created, which will be used to test Einstein's theory of gravity. Einstein predicted that the gravity created by a large body warped space-time, but he also predicted that if the large body was rotating it would create a drag effect on space-time known as frame dragging. Gravity Probe B will be able to test Einstein's theory using Earth's relatively small gravitational field because the instruments are so sensitive."
( Read More... | 59 of 115 comments | science.slashdot.org ) Zero Install: The Future of Linux on the Desktop?
Posted by michael on Saturday April 03, @12:33PM from the plug-and-play dept. SiegeX writes "Zero Install,which is apart of the ROX desktop environment is not just a new packaging system, it's a whole new way of thinking; a way that I believe is exactly what Linux needs to become a serious contender for Joe User's desktop. Zero Install uses an NFS to both run *and* install apps from. The apps are all self-contained in their own directory; binaries, docs, source code and all. Once the app has been downloaded its kept in a cache from that point on to minimize delay. The beauty becomes apparent when Zero Install is combined with ROX which runs the application by just clicking on the directory it was installed to. Deleting the application along with all the other misc files is as simple as removing the directory it's contained in. This method of partitioning applications in their own directories also allows installing multiple versions of any application trivial. This is something even the greatest of technophobes could understand and use with ease."
( Read More... | 271 of 356 comments ) Inexpensive Dashboard PC
Posted by CmdrTaco on Saturday April 03, @11:31AM from the everyone-needs-a-project dept. Kristian - Dreamless writes "Wanting to war drive with style? The other day I surfed the web to find a free dash pc solution to my car since the commercial ones cost around 2000-2500$ here in Denmark. I found DashPC.com and I must say this looks promising a very nice GUI and the features seems to be endless: Navigation with War driving, Multimedia and so on. Requirements? Low cost pc and a dash LCD display."
( Read More... | 69 of 106 comments ) Sun and Microsoft Make Nice
Posted by CmdrTaco on Saturday April 03, @10:59AM from the more-expensive-then-a-kiss-and-make-up dept. DrLudicrous writes "Sun Microsystems and Microsoft have reached some kind of settlement (NYTimes, registration required) with regards to patent issues and Sun's antitrust suit against Microsoft. Microsoft is apparently going to pay Sun about 1.6 billion US dollars, join into a ten-year pact of cooperation, and resolve a set of patent disputes. This has been in the works for about a year, starting as a series of phone calls between Scott McNealy and Steve Ballmer. You can also catch the story here." update oh well, it's a duplicate. Nothing else interesting happening today:)
( Read More... | 71 of 112 comments ) Simpsons Actors on Strike
Posted by CmdrTaco on Saturday April 03, @10:17AM from the but-we-need-them-to-live dept. ameoba wr
Damn, I coulda used one of those in the tournament my team just lost:-) Seriously, though, how long do you think till we pay to watch these things play games?
We've had simulated sports for years - EA's FIFA series let you simulate entire world cup tournaments. Yes, it may seem like an attractive proposition - the cost would be less since there are no arrogant prima donnas demanding millions. However, until you can give the robots the flair and personality of human athletes, it just won't catch on.
Hell, I can simulate player personalities right here.
Commentator: "What's your strategy going into the second half?"
Robo-player: "Well, we just weren't scoring enough points was the problem. We're gonna try to play hard and score some more goals than we did in the first half."
Commentator: "All right."
I don't think the soccer-playing robot would have too much trouble doing a retarded dance in the end zone, so I think we're set.
The real challenge will be to teach robots to make terrible jokes and use the word "literally" improperly in every sentence so we can get rid of announcers.
Say 46 more years, by the RoboCup organization's target.
But how autonomous?
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pholower
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· Score: 3, Interesting
This little guy is impressive. I couldn't get a lot of information from the website, but it looks to be controlled by computer. But, how autonomous is it? Im sure it won't look as good as the programmable, but I would like to see if it can do all of these things as an autonomous robot. As long as the slashdot effect isn't immediate, you should view the videos of the robot picking up the ball and throwing it overhanded, also, the one of him doing a handstand is incredible. Why can't asimo do all of this yet?
-- --
johntracy.com, because everybody else is wrong.
i agree completely. i was AMAZED at how flexable it was and how aware it appeared to be of its own balance and physics in general. do you think its completely remote controlled? i would image it would need one very complex control or two operators.
I can imagine the toy company new product people wetting their pants over this little guy.
Re:But how autonomous?
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Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
>But how autonomous?
AFAICT: not at all. it moves autonomously, but does not have much in terms of sensors (it can detect that it has fallen, but I could not find any info on how it knows that a ball is there)
I also think they sort-of cheated by giving it those huge feet. These make it easier to balance the thing on even ground,
automonous humanoid robot Robovie-M can... even demonstrate shame
Is shame *really* what we want in a robot?
After all, there's no shame liking wetting oneself... it's bad enough when a child wets his/her pants or bed, but when a robot does it, the result could be short circuits or worse.
There's a big difference between demonstrating shame and feeling shame. It's a pretty paltry feature compared to the ability to automate its motions so well. I wonder how well it'll do in the RoboCup?
I remain convinced the robots are pretending to be ashamed of what they have done so that the other ones can slaughter every unwitting human in the stands.
It depends on how you define feeling. Feeling is basically chemical reactions in the body. You could say that the robot feels shame because of electrical changes in the robot (different commands). Like the robot, we are programmed to feel shame. How is our shame different than the shame that the robot shows/feels?
I don't know. Some AC was just lambasted for not demonstrating proper empathy regarding the dangers of living on the creaky ISS. I think people tend to value emotional displays far more than the actual emotions behind them.
Re:Hmm
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Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
Just look at any politician for an example of that fact.
This is exactly why slashdot sucks so much. It is filled with 10 year old close-minded 31335ests who resort to personal defamation as a counter argument.
Carnegie Mellon AIBOs pwn this
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ElGnomo
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· Score: 5, Informative
Im actually a student at Carnegie mellon University where we have our own teams of robotic soccer players, ranging from cute little Sony Aibos dogs that pwn in international Aibo dog soccer competitions ( not kidding! )to an up and comming segway team!
check it out here
Re:Carnegie Mellon AIBOs pwn this
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metlin
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· Score: 4, Informative
I went to a presentation of the robots for a robotics course (not the RoboCup team, however) last quarter, and it was extremely interesting seeing how the robots work and what they could do. They appear to run a custom Unix-like or Unix OS by Sony, and one of the students remarked how they could telnet into the dogs for debugging or development (?) purposes.
The robots themselves move quite slowly, and they frequently get themselves into comical positions. Putting two robots side by side and placing a ball in front of them is not good; they'll fight with each other for space. I also witnessed several occasions where the robots got stuck around the goal area.
This was offset, however, by some truly spectacular goals scored by some of the robots, as well as the incredibly interesting ball-searching behavior exhibited by some of the robots.
Overall I had a sense of awe seeing these tiny mechanical things moving around under their own power and making computations themselves. A century ago people couldn't even imagine the state of electronics today, and I think a century from now these robots will likewise do things unimaginable to us.
Re:Carnegie Mellon AIBOs pwn this
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Hays
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· Score: 1
Yes... pretty similar.. since Tucker is from CMU and so was a lot of your doggy source code:)/cmu and gatech student.
Re:Carnegie Mellon AIBOs pwn this
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w3weasel
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· Score: 1
I think the point of this little robot is that it is amazingly dexterous... far moreso than any other advanced bipedal design I have seen. It plays soccer, and can probably whup up on many soccer bots, but would struggle against wheeled or 4+ legged bots. The little soccer matches that occur between robot developers is just a good way for a lab to get their advancements noticed and (most importantly) funded. My point is, Carnegie Mellon may win the cup, but this little guy could likely recieve a mulit-billion dollar contract from the pentagon (pending suitable modification).
--
Just as irrigation is the lifeblood of the Southwest, lifeblood is the soup of cannibals. -- Jack Handy
Re:Carnegie Mellon AIBOs pwn this
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metlin
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· Score: 1
I know:)
Makes me wonder why we lost to CMU in last year's RoboCup '03.
*tongue in cheek*
On another note, I heard that Tucker was a former F16 pilot - any idea? I should say he is a damn cool guy, though.
Soccer robot Mega-X153
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Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
Do they all fit together into one single soccer playing robot?
What about this?
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thedillybar
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· Score: 3, Interesting
That looks pretty cool. But does it even compare to this robot?
Re:What about this?
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levram2
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· Score: 5, Informative
That "robot" is a cgi stealth marketing ad for the mini cooper. See this previous slashdot discussion.
Re:What about this?
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Malk-a-mite
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· Score: 2, Interesting
"Now, the Transformers are set to undergo yet another metamorphosis, this one bringing them to the silver screen. Sure, they've been there before (back in 1986), but this new movie will be special; it will be live action!"
Now go back and look at the page the parent post links to...
Hmm. The site is still playing it straight. I agree it's pretty much a fake site, though I don't know about the marketing angle. Might be, might not be.
Funny he's still playing it as if it's real, though.
At first I thought that's a pretty cool robot then as I watched additional videos the thought of it being a fake became more apparent. The video of the robot stopping the car as it was headed toward a wall at a decent speed totally gave it away though. Part of me wanted that robot to be real.:)
Also, for the miraculous gift of the break tag, which your servant is not worthy enough to use.
-- .i lu doi ringos.star. xu do puku'aroroi dunli dopecaku leni virnu li'u
I'm impressed by this
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SimianOverlord
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· Score: 4, Insightful
This little guy shows that as far as the goal of a fully working robotic (human-avatar) intelligence, mechanistically we're there. We can create an avatar which is robust enough to do the full human movements. Now we just need to improve the AI side of things. Let's face it, AI is severly lacking at the moment. I wouldn't say I'm an expert by any means, but I do try to keep up with the relevant research in the field.
Most experts agree the real test of artificial intelligence is, of course, found in game theory, with chess programs in particular gaining a lot of attention and publicity because of their year on year increase in performance thanks to better and better AI. But these certainly aren't quite up to scratch - a good example is a game I played just 10 minutes ago against the computer at so-called "Intermediate II" level.
I find most computer chess programs good at opening moves, because most have built in opening move databases (which I regard as cheating). I played the two knights defense as always, leading with 1....d4. The computer answered with its own two knights defense which is particularly annoying and insipid. That's one mark down for AI, mimicking human behaviour.
The trouble is chess AI is reactive rather than proactive and so whereas I was working to take down the right flank of the computers defence using a Queen bishop rook combo, it was just skirmishing around the centre to take a few pawns off me. Very poor AI.
Frankly, it's stategic thinking that the computer can't match us at, which was clear by move 27, where my move 27...KnC3-E4 forked a queen and rook. That sort of manouvering is quite obvious to the human intellect, and the advantage in points meant I went on to win the game quite comfortably again, with a rook v bishop endgame and quick checkmate.
Really all this just goes to illustrate that AI has a long way to go...I wouldn't say I was much more than a very good chess player.
-- Meine Schwester ist sehr, sehr reizvoll - Nietzsche
Re:I'm impressed by this
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Deusy
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· Score: 2, Insightful
This little guy shows that as far as the goal of a fully working robotic (human-avatar) intelligence, mechanistically we're there. We can create an avatar which is robust enough to do the full human movements. Now we just need to improve the AI side of things. Let's face it, AI is severly lacking at the moment. I wouldn't say I'm an expert by any means, but I do try to keep up with the relevant research in the field.
Ruh-eally. Did you watch the movies?
The robots had the dexterity and balance of, at best, a 3 year old human. The over hand throw video was telling, as it took the robot several separate motions to position itself and wobbled about as much as is possible without falling over upon throwing the ball. The ball was thrown with no accuracy.
If anything, this actually shows how far we have yet to go before welcoming our robot overlords.
Re:I'm impressed by this
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Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
Dude... you suck.
Re:I'm impressed by this
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Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
> I find most computer chess programs good at opening moves, > because most have built in opening move databases > (which I regard as cheating)
So, how did you learn your opening theory? Just by yourself, or did you read some books? If so, do you consider that cheating, too
Re:I'm impressed by this
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RichardX
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· Score: 3, Insightful
No offence, but unless you happen to be Kasparov, I'd suggest you should look for a better chess program before denoucing AI systems in general as being poor at chess.
Chess is a game very well suited to computers, and thus one that AI systems have rapidly become good at. If you want to see something AI really struggles with, take a look at the game of Go - as yet noone's come close to creating a Deep Blue of Go, as it's far more abstract and 'human' in it's mechanics than chess.
-- Curiosity was framed. Ignorance killed the cat.
Re:I'm impressed by this
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Jeremi
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· Score: 3, Funny
The robots had the dexterity and balance of, at best, a 3 year old human
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
Re:I'm impressed by this
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Rolo+Tomasi
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· Score: 2, Interesting
The problem is that, from what I can tell, all this robot does is play back previously recorded motions. The way these motions were derived was through a (probably rather long-winded and painstaking) process of trial and error. It probably went like: move foot forward 1mm - robot topples - repeat, now move foot 1mm to the right first... you can see this has nothing to do with intelligence. This is how asimo works as well, btw.
This robot can't react to it's environment. It has no sensors. If the environment changes only a tiny bit, it fails. E.g. if you put it on a slope, or just next to a wall. I guess you could call it a fake. The Japanese seem to have a weak spot for stuff like this - stuff that really looks cool, but when you look closer there's not much behind it.
Remember the "Super Mario Bros 3 in 2 minutes" video? The Japanese guy made it in an emulator, basically frame by frame. Every time something he did was not perfect, he reloaded the game and tried again. I took him months. In the end, it looks like some guy plays a fantastically good game, but, it's really a fake, and if you think about it, a pointless exercise.
-- Did you know you can fertilize your lawn with used motor oil?
Re:I'm impressed by this
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pipingguy
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· Score: 2, Funny
The over hand throw video was telling, as it took the robot several separate motions to position itself and wobbled about as much as is possible without falling over upon throwing the ball. The ball was thrown with no accuracy.
Plus, it throws like a girl.
Re:I'm impressed by this
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rustycage
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· Score: 1
The way these motions were derived was through a (probably rather long-winded and painstaking) process of trial and error. It probably went like: move foot forward 1mm - robot topples - repeat, now move foot 1mm to the right first... you can see this has nothing to do with intelligence.
Hmmm...kind of like a human child learns it's motor skills. Ask anybody small child if the child stood up and walked across the floor on the first try. It takes years for a human to develop the motor skills that these robots have. The child topples and records the memory in its database(brain) and tries again until it succeeds.
Once a motion is succesfully completed is much more likely to be sucessful on the next attempt. It is the same for the robots, when the right sequence of movements has been captured in the database, it becomes likely that motion will succeed on the next attempt.
-- No Sig For You
Re:I'm impressed by this
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Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
Can your five year old do a reasonable job of sewing a line of even stitches in cloth? As good as a sewing machine?
No? You mean, there are things machines do better than humans??
Re:I'm impressed by this
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TinheadNed
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· Score: 1
Just to be picky, but there is little intelligence involved in playing chess for computers. They merely explore the combinatorial explosion of possible moves. Deep Blue won by being able to see further than 8 moves ahead, which is normally the standard for chess grandmasters.
If you want to see some good, intelligence, I suggest you look at this. (Scroll down a bit).
This is a neural network trained to play backgammon. It plays at a world grandmaster level, and has discovered at least one strategy not known to humans before. I found my Reinforcement Learning course pretty boring until I discovered this.
Re:I'm impressed by this
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PantsWearer
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· Score: 1
It's a bit like having a dictionary in a spelling contest, IMO. Cheating.
It's only cheating because you can't memorize the dictionary. What if someone did memorize the dictionary, would you eliminate him because he was cheating?
I'm sure that grandmasters remember more opening moves than you do, are they cheating?
Computers don't play chess like humans. Internally, they're very different, but they still play chess. Lookups may be hard for you, but they're easy for computers.
-- Be glad life is unfair, otherwise we'd deserve all this.
I want to see
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Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
little robots that can quickly create mirror sites before a site is slashdotted.
OK, but what about the hooligans ?
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Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 2, Insightful
are they called "soccer hooligans" or "football hooligans" ?
Re:OK, but what about the hooligans ?
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Deusy
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· Score: 0, Troll
are they called "soccer hooligans" or "football hooligans" ?
I believe the official term is, fat, stupid, wonkey-tooth, jobless, morons.
Unless you're Argentinian, in which case it's "government officials".
I bet their servers are expressing shame right now.
Re:Shame
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Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
Hey people,
I was browsing slashdot today and found out there was a storie about me. Somebody apparently posted those movies I made of myself playing soccer naked. Very funny. If I ever find out who did this, i'll punch you soo hard!!!
Kiss my shiny metal ass, Robovie-M
Little Robot signs with NY Yankees for $73 million
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pdcryan
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· Score: 1
George Steinbrenner just could not allow the Red Sox to pick up the little robot and round out their rotation. Apparently, TV's Vicky from "Small Wonder" is also in talks with the NY baseball franchise as is D.A.R.Y.L.
- *BSD, it will be unexiting, but the best keeper the world has ever seen.
- Windows, it will be great, because games is the one area where Windows is better than everything else.
- MacOSX, it will look really good and get married to a Spice Girl. (I sure hope this does not mean David Beckham is dying.)
- Linux, you do not want to go near its fanatical followers.;-)
Re:OS?
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Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 1, Funny
Correction, if it runs windows It would make an exciting Offensive player... but it would frequently take breaks on plays instead of working defense... and occationally it would randomly take itself out of the game if there was too much going on.
I'm sorry, I forgot to dumb it down for ya. It is "do more". I just figured if you were a southpaw you would get it. Sorry for confusing you. In the future I will remember yuor handicap.
shame for a missed shot?
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Scrameustache
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· Score: 1, Redundant
There are competions in the US that use the Sony Aibos to play soccer. (Ok, so Aibo's Japanese)There's even a "RoboCup American Open". Aibo's are cuter anyway.
Clicky Clicky
Re:Ignorant mods
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bishiraver
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· Score: 2, Informative
I suppose it's all part of the ultimate goal of developing a team of fully autonomous humanoid robots that can win against the human world champion team in soccer
A Japanese Robot Demonstrating Shame?!
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dupper
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· Score: 2, Funny
Quiet you! Don't interruput poorly thought out/. anti-americanism, which is required in every single thread.
The robots do have one advantage
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bigbaloney
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· Score: 0
Bender: Yo, highness! Uh, just out of robo-curiosity, why would you use a guy's nose for an aphrodisiac instead of his, you know... wing dang doodle? Lrrr: But I thought the horn was the human, uh, wing dang doodle? Bender: No sir-ee! The main event, so to speak, is downstairs, near the wallet. Ever seen soccer players line up to block a free kick? They ain't covering their noses, I'll tell ya that much. Well, seeya!
this looks a little too good to be true. Are we sure it just isn't a stop motion movie?
--m
Re:Ignorant mods
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Cruciform
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· Score: 2, Insightful
Slashdot doesn't need anti-americanism.
US foreign policy does a fine job of that itself:P
It is called SOCCER
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Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
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?
Re:Dear rest of the world
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Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
When you say football, which of the 3-4 different sports are you referring to? Aussie rules? American? Rugby? Others?
When you say soccer, which... oh never mind, there is only one.
Americans call a spade a spade. You guys call a shovel a spade (when there are more kinds of shovels than spades out there)
"handle the ball with their HANDS"
Tell that to the NFL kickers. Tell that to the running backs. They don't roll across the field. They *gasp* use their FEET!
Re:right handed
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Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
So now proper sentence construction == dumbing down? Interesting.
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.
Can it do sarongs, stupid haircuts, and roasting?
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StuWho
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· Score: 2, Funny
Also can it snort mucas from one nostril, tell the newspapers about its gambling problem, be photographed with hookers? How's its gang rape programming?
These questions must be answered before we can evaluate whether this is truly a robotic footballer.
-- "If you think nobody cares if you're alive, try missing a couple of car payments." Earl Wilson
I bet the boys down at DARPA are drooling at this little robot performing the "punch". If they built a 10ft tall version, I wonder if it could run across the desert, off-trail, at 40mph? Throw a couple rail-guns on it's arms and DARPA would blow it's load.
Soccer game, football game, Wargame, what's the difference?
If you look up the history of Soccer and American Football, you will find that American Football came first. What we refer to as football has the right to the name first. Calling soccer football is stealing the name. American Football was called football before Soccer existed. Though it's only by a few years.
Top-level Functions
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t_allardyce
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· Score: 4, Funny
I looked it up. It looks like there's plenty of room for arguments over when each sport was invented.
Re:Soccer is ghey
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Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
Shouldn't feed the trolls but...
Soccer is not ghey. Uh-MEHR-uh-CAHN Football is ghey. How? Because the pussies wear body armour.
In Britain, where everything was invented, we have a similar sport called Rugby with no body armour. People get terrible injuries but they don't care because they're so goddammed butch. In a recent Ireland v England match, one player had his leg ripped off and didn't notice until half time.
The only way we could make football ghey would be if we took away all the skill, put everyone in padding and let people throw the ball forward. Now that's teh ghey. You should see some of the tackles. Some of the shirt pulling. The feigned injuries, the face pulling and the abuse meted out. Graham Le Saux was taunted as gay for 20 years just for going camping (tent camping) with some mates by other professional footballers. Footballers have beautiful wives and the newspapers are full of them shagging slappers and getting in the red tops.
No, football gheyness is essentially an HUh-MEHR-uh-CAAAAHN refinement on a perfect formula. Should have invaded you fucks years ago. You were only good when we were in charge.
Re:U.S. Football Capitalist Game; Soccer Marxest G
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pjt33
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· Score: 1
Soccer is a Marxest game characterized by its... lack of specialization of labor
You don't play it, do you? Put two defenders up front, and you'll be lucky to score: fill your back row with strikers, and your goalie will be very busy.
I've always wondered why is American football called _foot_ball when the players are carrying the ball in their hands. Yeah, I know they occasionally stop to kick the ball too, but most of the time it is carried in hands.
Re:Sigh.
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Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
Football (or soccer as the Yanks insist on calling it) was played well before Columbus found a continent now named after a Spaniard. Kicking an inflated pigs bladder around was a popular pasttime in mediaeval England. American Football is just rugby for twats who have to wear body armour.
Actually it's also called soccer in Ireland and Australia, where 'football' refers to Gaelic and Australian Rules football respectively.
In parts of Wales football means rugby.
In fact soccer is probably only called 'football' in England and Scotland (elsewhere it's futbol, calcio, etc)!
Hahahahahaaa brilliant stuff
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Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
It depends on how you define feeling. Feeling is basically chemical reactions in the body. You could say that the light bulb feels happy because of electrical changes in the light bulb (switched on). Like the light bulb, we are programmed to feel happy. How is our happiness different than the happiness that the light bulb shows/feels?
You know, you're right... because people are always kicking a ball in american FOOTball.
I'm sorry, but how is calling a sport where the foot rarely touches the ball football 'less-confusing'?
-- Not Free(as in beer).
Free(as in "I'm free to beat you over the head for being a dumbass")
I agree with you. In one sport, a spherical object (a ball) is mainly propelled by the feet of the players.
In the other sport, a pointy object that isn't even oval shaped (called by some a ball, but that's pushing the definition of ball way too much) is only occasionally kicked, and is almost always carried or thrown by the players' arms.
Obviously, if one of these sports is to be called football, it's the first one (and most of the world does just that).
The other one could be called "American Rugby" since it certainly resembles the sport played in most other former British colonies.
Re:can't be any worse...
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Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
American football is a distinct type of football that developed in the United States in the 19th century. It developed from soccer (association football) and rugby footbal.
Apparently association football (soccer) came first.
Sorry to nitpick, but Americo Vespucci was also Italian, not Spaniard. And as far as I know, he never came to the land now know as the USA, so even the "American" in American Football is debatable.
Congratulations on your Score 5, Flamebait. Take a picture of that for posterity.
Now get over it. The US is not the only country that refers to that sport as Soccer. While most of the rest of the world refers to it as futbol or some variant thereof, that doesn't mean that suddenly the US should rename one of it's most popular sports, which developed at roughly the same time and carries with it large entrenched domestic interests.
You call it football, we call it soccer. In the same way that we haven't standardized on one language, we're allowed to have different names for the same things. When we talk about soccer, you know what we are saying. When you talk about football, we can guess you don't mean American or Australian or Rugby.
Now watch _me_ demonstrate shame
by
thejoelpatrol
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· Score: 1
Forget losing your job to a robot--that thing can do a better handstand than I ever could. Robot olympics in 2008?
How is this relevant? Does every sport have to be fully described by its name now?
I dont see a lot of insects in a game of cricket, yet somehow people still understand what it means.
Yeesh.
Don't drag Mexico into this...
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
Mexico is part of North America, and correctly refers to soccer as "futbol". This other sport where players handle the ball with their hands and only rarely ever kick it is referred to as "futbol americano".
Does anyone else get that feeling that the US and Europe are about to play catch-up again? Right now we're at the technological level of atonomous vacuums, and japan is training their ambidextrous robotic armies on soccer. How long before Japan makes one that's 3 feet tall, terribly cute, and can wash the dishes (with a stepstool)? While our educational institutions are doing research with an eye for immediate military applications, Japan has been doing pure research for the past twenty years, and it is starting to pay off.
That's not to say that we haven't made great strides in robots that can blow up other robots, but a consumer robot will probably be humanoid, as that is both what people are most comfortable with and what households are designed to support. All of the good humanoid robots come from japan. The most dexterous robots come from japan. Japanese robots have a sense of balance and manipulation that American robots just can't touch. And we're many years behind the ability to release a commercial robot like the Aibo.
Not to be too serious, but it looks like we will have a lot of ground to recover when this type of thing catches on...
It is relevant because we have two mayor games that share the same name (football). One is fully described by it's name, and the other one isn't. Which one should keep the name?
Sports don't have to be described by their names but it's really useful (basketball, baseball, athletism...), and it's awfully confusing when the name describes a different thing.
Regarding cricket: Wherever the name 'cricket' came from - and from the various theories 'cricce', Anglo-Saxon for a stick, is the generally accepted origin. It can be assumed that it was played before it was called cricket.
Assuming that, it's a reasonable name for a game played with a (very big and heavy) stick.
1869 Rutgers and Princeton played a college soccer football game, the first ever, November 6. The game used modified London Football Association rules. During the next seven years, rugby gained favor with the major eastern schools over soccer, and modern football began to develop from rugby.
1876 At the Massasoit convention, the first rules for American football were written. Walter Camp, who would become known as the father of American football, first became involved with the game.
So, American Football (Gridiron) is based on Rugby, which is a sibling of Football (the game where you kick the ball all the time).
Re:Dear rest of the world
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
Right... so it's more appropriate to call gridiron football than a sport which has existed for well over a century, played worldwide more than any other and consists almost entirely of people kicking a ball with their feet.
Asimo doesn't have boards for hands and feet
by
puargsss
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· Score: 2, Insightful
You'll notice Asimo was designed to look and act like a human, while this soccer robot was designed to 1) identify ball, and 2) move ball to goal. Asimo is supposed to interact with humans and have more autonomous thinking than just moving a ball around. Not to mention the surface area of those feet and hands looks to be about 300% comparitively by size with the Asimo.
We need one. Or eleven.
by
Sly+Mongoose
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· Score: 2, Funny
The West Indies need some of these robots, providing they can be taught to play cricket. In fact, we would benefit from them even if they can't be taught to play cricket! As it stands, my dog would make a grand addition to the team, because he can catch the ball. OK, he can't bat worth shit, but neither can any of the current team members...
Defencing move
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
I am not to comfortable with a robot that can defend it self, punch and show shame that it didnt rip your balls ( it just popped your eyes out )....scray times yet to come...
If they didn't wear body armour, game time wouldn't be nearly as long as it is due to all of the injuries that happen occur. Keep in mind that American football is a full contact sport. And even with all the armour players wear, there is always injuries.
But hey, if you want to play the game without protection against a bunch of ogres...then be my guest. But when you get hurt, don't bitch about it on slashdot.
-- Life is not for the lazy.
Sir,
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
I was having a shit day and you have more than cheered me up. Bravo.
MechWarrior Anyone?
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
How long before can add miniature artillary for a little live-action MechWarrior?
Re:Sigh. - Cowboys vs. Man. U.
by
griffitts
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· Score: 0
OK, let's settle this soccer/football naming thing once and for all. Dallas Cowboys vs. Manchester United, both playing their own version of football. Winner gets to keep the name.
The motion doesn't look natural. There is no momentum on their movements. And considering the lack on information on their website, I'd say it's fake. But props for making it very believable. suckers.
Look at what the top-of-the-line research robots can do, and this is far beyond those capabilities. Balance is a very non-trivial issue. With the low-power, low-performance embedded processor they could fit in there, there's no way the robot could balance itself that fast to those types of motions - even if they were all reprogrammed. Give me a schematic of the cpu board and the software code, and I might give it a second chance.
Re:Sigh.
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
Except that American football has nothing to do with a foot kicking a ball, unless it's the nerdy guy who comes out like once a game to kick a field goal, misses, and has to carry the weight of the world on his sorry back for the rest of his miserable life. Now that's what I call football.
Robotic Soccer's answer to the World Cup - it's called Robocup
Many universities take part in this event and the cup's mission is to "...develop a team of fully autonomous humanoid robots that can win against the human world soccer champion team by 2050..."
Re:Oh yea, but can it install Linux?
by
a1cypher
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· Score: 1
Hrmm.. This could have two possible meanings..
a) It can physically access a computer system, pop in a CD and install linux.
or, slightly less interesting...
b) Have linux installed and running on its onboard CPU.
Uh... did anyone else notice the strings?
by
JayGuerette
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· Score: 0
Watch the videos again. There are strings.... you can see them in most of the videos. I can't tell if there is enough tension on them to indicate these are really just PUPPETS; but at the very least, it's a dramatically less impressive feat to have a robot that requires guide wires!
Re:Uh... did anyone else notice the strings?
by
skawtus
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· Score: 1
Truly sir... you obviously don't know anything. These same robots compete at robo one... try to check that site out if you aren't to busy wearing tin foil on your head.
www.robo-one.com
Personally, I didn't think this was very impressive. Sure, they can program a robot to look cute while it _slowly_ picks up a ball and throws it, but how about catching it?
That's what he's saying. Football (the game where you kick the ball all the time (soccer)) and Rugby are variations on a theme. American "football" was later derived from Rugby.
I'm pretty sure it's not an automaton.
by
LiberalApplication
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· Score: 1
In fact, I'm pretty sure it's R/C.
While we're at it, I'm pretty sure we're missing the point by arguing whether it is demonstrating the ability to play soccer or football, since it was in fact a contestant in Bandai's annual Robo-One where the goal was to have little anthropomorphic (.PNG) robots pummel (.MPG) the crap (.MPG) out of each other to win by TKO. Dig around the sites and you'll find piles of highly entertaining videos.
For those of you who can't stomach anthropomorphic robot on anthropomorphic robot violence, click here for footage of the little suckers particpating in non-combative activities.
UK Hosts First National Robot Football Championshi
by
FofR
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· Score: 0
BBC has something about robotic footballers;
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/3591031.stm
"UK Hosts First National Robot Football Championship"
http://www.newsandevents.warwick.ac.uk/index.cfm?p age=151
These are completely autonomous devices that play against each other. They come in teams developed by various british universities.
Go Warwick!
Poor English on the NFL's part: Association Football is the feet variety. What the sentence following means is that rugby took over from football in popularity. So football is still the prior art.
Sorry, I don't get you... a weak argument for what?
Vespucci did come to America, only it was South America and not North America. He was a cartographer sent by the Spanish crown to map the "New World", and he was the one who realized that it was a whole new continent, and not some part of Asia as Columbus thought. (Columbus' calculations for the distance to Asia were way off).
Therefore, Americo Vespucci was the one who actually "discovered" America (the continent), so it was eventually named after him.
Maybe the argument you disagree with is my opinion that "American" Football is a little misleading since the people of most of the countries of the continent that Americo "discovered" do not know or care about that sport.
Well thank for the high school history lesson;) but I really am not too worried about where Vespucci did or did not come. The fact is that in common usage the term "America" refers to the United States. So the term "American Football" logically applies to the sport that "Americans" call football.
-- The darkness... controls the music.
The music... controls the soul.
The fact is that in common usage the term "America" refers to the United States.
Hummm... please forgive my stubbornness, but... precisely the point of the whole football vs soccer issue is that "common usage" is not really common at all, meaning not universal.
In the USA, the term "America" refers to the United States. In other places, "America" refers to the continent, and people from other "American" countries call themselves "American". When referring to U.S. citizens, they use other terms.
This goes as far as replacing the terms in translations of Hollywood movies (which looks rather funny when the movies are subtitled). And they will look at you as if you had lost your mind if you use the America==USA definition. Also, they have never heard of a sport called "soccer".
But, well, I guess we are all entitled to have diverging opinions...:)
Upgrade your chess program
by
Animats
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· Score: 1
If you're beating a chess program, it must be an obsolete one. Get
Deep Fritz, for only $112. This is the program that tied Kasparov 2:2, running on a 4-CPU desktop machine.
Unless your picture has been on the cover of Chess Life, Deep Fritz will trounce you.
There are not several different sports. Football is football. Australian football is that game that looks like rugby, but only people from Australia watch. American football likewise, but only people from the US watch it. The only ones who have the same name for two sports are the US, the rest of the world have no problem. Anyway, I don't think anybody from outside the US watches American Football, at least in Latin American ESPN and ESPN2, it's easier to find table tennis than it is American Footbal, so when they announce "futbol en ESPN" we all know what they are talking about.
Slashdot Mirror
Hot robot soccer moms?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Damn, I coulda used one of those in the tournament my team just lost :-) Seriously, though, how long do you think till we pay to watch these things play games?
This little guy is impressive. I couldn't get a lot of information from the website, but it looks to be controlled by computer. But, how autonomous is it? Im sure it won't look as good as the programmable, but I would like to see if it can do all of these things as an autonomous robot. As long as the slashdot effect isn't immediate, you should view the videos of the robot picking up the ball and throwing it overhanded, also, the one of him doing a handstand is incredible. Why can't asimo do all of this yet?
-- johntracy.com, because everybody else is wrong.
...aaaal
automonous humanoid robot Robovie-M can ... even demonstrate shame
... it's bad enough when a child wets his/her pants or bed, but when a robot does it, the result could be short circuits or worse.
Is shame *really* what we want in a robot?
After all, there's no shame liking wetting oneself
-kgj
-kgj
Bots playing soccer? I've been playing against bots in video games for a long time now. Nothing new here!
"even demonstrate shame"
There's a big difference between demonstrating shame and feeling shame. It's a pretty paltry feature compared to the ability to automate its motions so well. I wonder how well it'll do in the RoboCup?
Im actually a student at Carnegie mellon University where we have our own teams of robotic soccer players, ranging from cute little Sony Aibos dogs that pwn in international Aibo dog soccer competitions ( not kidding! )to an up and comming segway team!
check it out here
Do they all fit together into one single soccer playing robot?
That looks pretty cool. But does it even compare to this robot?
Yes, but does it rip off its shirt after a cup-winning goal shot? Everyone knows that the crowd likes it when the players hamm it up.
(ducks, runs for cover)
Please help metamoderate.
With looks like that, they're sure to intimidate anyone who stands in their way.
everyone knows left handed people are smarter
No, actually, I didn't know that.
I'm ambidextrous. What does that make me?
Ciao,
luigi
Bisexual.
i bet they could more if they were left handed
;-D
Could what more? Are you a wannabe southpaw or are you a real one whose lefthandedness interferes with his ability to write proper English?
....anyone got links to mirrors?
Lots of QuickTime movies of the bot in action. Thank you sweet lord for the miraculous gift of context!
This little guy shows that as far as the goal of a fully working robotic (human-avatar) intelligence, mechanistically we're there. We can create an avatar which is robust enough to do the full human movements. Now we just need to improve the AI side of things. Let's face it, AI is severly lacking at the moment. I wouldn't say I'm an expert by any means, but I do try to keep up with the relevant research in the field.
Most experts agree the real test of artificial intelligence is, of course, found in game theory, with chess programs in particular gaining a lot of attention and publicity because of their year on year increase in performance thanks to better and better AI. But these certainly aren't quite up to scratch - a good example is a game I played just 10 minutes ago against the computer at so-called "Intermediate II" level.
I find most computer chess programs good at opening moves, because most have built in opening move databases (which I regard as cheating). I played the two knights defense as always, leading with 1....d4. The computer answered with its own two knights defense which is particularly annoying and insipid. That's one mark down for AI, mimicking human behaviour.
The trouble is chess AI is reactive rather than proactive and so whereas I was working to take down the right flank of the computers defence using a Queen bishop rook combo, it was just skirmishing around the centre to take a few pawns off me. Very poor AI.
Frankly, it's stategic thinking that the computer can't match us at, which was clear by move 27, where my move 27...KnC3-E4 forked a queen and rook. That sort of manouvering is quite obvious to the human intellect, and the advantage in points meant I went on to win the game quite comfortably again, with a rook v bishop endgame and quick checkmate.
Really all this just goes to illustrate that AI has a long way to go...I wouldn't say I was much more than a very good chess player.
Meine Schwester ist sehr, sehr reizvoll - Nietzsche
little robots that can quickly create mirror sites before a site is slashdotted.
are they called "soccer hooligans" or "football hooligans" ?
I bet their servers are expressing shame right now.
George Steinbrenner just could not allow the Red Sox to pick up the little robot and round out their rotation. Apparently, TV's Vicky from "Small Wonder" is also in talks with the NY baseball franchise as is D.A.R.Y.L.
Ryan Kennedy opposes comm
Assuming it runs...
;-)
- *BSD, it will be unexiting, but the best keeper the world has ever seen.
- Windows, it will be great, because games is the one area where Windows is better than everything else.
- MacOSX, it will look really good and get married to a Spice Girl. (I sure hope this does not mean David Beckham is dying.)
- Linux, you do not want to go near its fanatical followers.
Especially Long John Silver Impersonators...
and even demonstrate shame (over a missed shot, presumably)
No. It's because nobody has bothered to give it any pants.
Something else,
i.e. football, where you kick a ball with your FOOT.
What is means in america, a game for people who armour, and handle the ball with their HANDS.
So who has the right name?
I'm sorry, I forgot to dumb it down for ya. It is "do more". I just figured if you were a southpaw you would get it. Sorry for confusing you. In the future I will remember yuor handicap.
You've got it all wrong.
Its ashamed because its naked!
I can see its parts!
You can't take the sky from me...
Is there an overzealous parent robot in the crowd yelling obscenities at the coach and screaming "Daddy didn't raise a loser!"
This should work...try not to kill this one too.
http://outboxes.com/www.vstone.co.jp/e/rt01e.htm
As of 10/06/03, I hate COBOL developers.
um..it was posted by the japanese...
There are competions in the US that use the Sony Aibos to play soccer. (Ok, so Aibo's Japanese)There's even a "RoboCup American Open". Aibo's are cuter anyway. Clicky Clicky
Yes, but RTFA. It's from Japan. Not NA.
sheesh
I suppose it's all part of the ultimate goal of developing a team of fully autonomous humanoid robots that can win against the human world champion team in soccer
Do they make a tanto that strong?
Quiet you! Don't interruput poorly thought out /. anti-americanism, which is required in every single thread.
Bender: Yo, highness! Uh, just out of robo-curiosity, why would you use a guy's nose for an aphrodisiac instead of his, you know... wing dang doodle?
Lrrr: But I thought the horn was the human, uh, wing dang doodle?
Bender: No sir-ee! The main event, so to speak, is downstairs, near the wallet. Ever seen soccer players line up to block a free kick? They ain't covering their noses, I'll tell ya that much. Well, seeya!
Technology, in its quest to mimic the unique abilities of the human being, chooses a sport that mostly outlaws the opposable thumb.
Seeing bad movies only encourages them. Watch responsibly
It's funny. Laugh, don't downvote.
this looks a little too good to be true. Are we sure it just isn't a stop motion movie? --m
Slashdot doesn't need anti-americanism.
:P
US foreign policy does a fine job of that itself
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?
When you say football, which of the 3-4 different sports are you referring to? Aussie rules? American? Rugby? Others?
When you say soccer, which... oh never mind, there is only one.
Americans call a spade a spade. You guys call a shovel a spade (when there are more kinds of shovels than spades out there)
"handle the ball with their HANDS"
Tell that to the NFL kickers. Tell that to the running backs. They don't roll across the field. They *gasp* use their FEET!
So now proper sentence construction == dumbing down? Interesting.
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.
Mewonders: wtf?
And tomorrow the stock exchange will be the human race
That's not the point. NA stole the name.
These questions must be answered before we can evaluate whether this is truly a robotic footballer.
"If you think nobody cares if you're alive, try missing a couple of car payments." Earl Wilson
I bet the boys down at DARPA are drooling at this little robot performing the "punch". If they built a 10ft tall version, I wonder if it could run across the desert, off-trail, at 40mph? Throw a couple rail-guns on it's arms and DARPA would blow it's load.
Soccer game, football game, Wargame, what's the difference?
Authority questions you. Return the favor.
If you look up the history of Soccer and American Football, you will find that American Football came first. What we refer to as football has the right to the name first. Calling soccer football is stealing the name. American Football was called football before Soccer existed. Though it's only by a few years.
Initialise:
-Take money
-Find ball
-Take money
-Move towards goal
-Take money
Game end:
-Return to changing rooms
-Overclock servos
-Refuse overclocking test
-Disqualified
-Take vacation
-Take money
-Have baby: name=[city|band|corporate product]
General:
-Take money
-Take knight-hood
Error Handling:
-Avoid tabloid photographers
-Avoid mid-season injuries
Additional: if (popularity > 10)
-Reality TV spin-off
-Reality TV spin-off
-Cameo
-Release single
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
4:02 EST, +5 Flamebait ?!
I delcare the parent post troll of the year.
lack of specialization of labor (ok, omitting the goalie :) ...but, there are specialization in soccer... :)
I looked it up. It looks like there's plenty of room for arguments over when each sport was invented.
Shouldn't feed the trolls but...
Soccer is not ghey. Uh-MEHR-uh-CAHN Football is ghey. How? Because the pussies wear body armour.
In Britain, where everything was invented, we have a similar sport called Rugby with no body armour. People get terrible injuries but they don't care because they're so goddammed butch. In a recent Ireland v England match, one player had his leg ripped off and didn't notice until half time.
The only way we could make football ghey would be if we took away all the skill, put everyone in padding and let people throw the ball forward. Now that's teh ghey. You should see some of the tackles. Some of the shirt pulling. The feigned injuries, the face pulling and the abuse meted out. Graham Le Saux was taunted as gay for 20 years just for going camping (tent camping) with some mates by other professional footballers. Footballers have beautiful wives and the newspapers are full of them shagging slappers and getting in the red tops.
No, football gheyness is essentially an HUh-MEHR-uh-CAAAAHN refinement on a perfect formula. Should have invaded you fucks years ago. You were only good when we were in charge.
I've always wondered why is American football called _foot_ball when the players are carrying the ball in their hands. Yeah, I know they occasionally stop to kick the ball too, but most of the time it is carried in hands.
Football (or soccer as the Yanks insist on calling it) was played well before Columbus found a continent now named after a Spaniard. Kicking an inflated pigs bladder around was a popular pasttime in mediaeval England. American Football is just rugby for twats who have to wear body armour.
Chris
In parts of Wales football means rugby.
In fact soccer is probably only called 'football' in England and Scotland (elsewhere it's futbol, calcio, etc)!
It depends on how you define feeling. Feeling is basically chemical reactions in the body. You could say that the light bulb feels happy because of electrical changes in the light bulb (switched on). Like the light bulb, we are programmed to feel happy. How is our happiness different than the happiness that the light bulb shows/feels?
Click. Click. Click. Click. Click.
You know, you're right... because people are always kicking a ball in american FOOTball. I'm sorry, but how is calling a sport where the foot rarely touches the ball football 'less-confusing'?
Not Free(as in beer). Free(as in "I'm free to beat you over the head for being a dumbass")
In the other sport, a pointy object that isn't even oval shaped (called by some a ball, but that's pushing the definition of ball way too much) is only occasionally kicked, and is almost always carried or thrown by the players' arms.
Obviously, if one of these sports is to be called football, it's the first one (and most of the world does just that).
The other one could be called "American Rugby" since it certainly resembles the sport played in most other former British colonies.
shut the fuck up, you inbred plastic paddy faggot
(In short: yes, I agree with you).
Dear rest of the world,
Speak English, and we'll call it football.
Deal?
Sincerely,
North America.
Congratulations on your Score 5, Flamebait. Take a picture of that for posterity.
Now get over it. The US is not the only country that refers to that sport as Soccer. While most of the rest of the world refers to it as futbol or some variant thereof, that doesn't mean that suddenly the US should rename one of it's most popular sports, which developed at roughly the same time and carries with it large entrenched domestic interests.
You call it football, we call it soccer. In the same way that we haven't standardized on one language, we're allowed to have different names for the same things. When we talk about soccer, you know what we are saying. When you talk about football, we can guess you don't mean American or Australian or Rugby.
Forget losing your job to a robot--that thing can do a better handstand than I ever could. Robot olympics in 2008?
How is this relevant? Does every sport have to be fully described by its name now?
I dont see a lot of insects in a game of cricket, yet somehow people still understand what it means.
Yeesh.
Mexico is part of North America, and correctly refers to soccer as "futbol". This other sport where players handle the ball with their hands and only rarely ever kick it is referred to as "futbol americano".
Does anyone else get that feeling that the US and Europe are about to play catch-up again? Right now we're at the technological level of atonomous vacuums, and japan is training their ambidextrous robotic armies on soccer. How long before Japan makes one that's 3 feet tall, terribly cute, and can wash the dishes (with a stepstool)? While our educational institutions are doing research with an eye for immediate military applications, Japan has been doing pure research for the past twenty years, and it is starting to pay off.
That's not to say that we haven't made great strides in robots that can blow up other robots, but a consumer robot will probably be humanoid, as that is both what people are most comfortable with and what households are designed to support. All of the good humanoid robots come from japan. The most dexterous robots come from japan. Japanese robots have a sense of balance and manipulation that American robots just can't touch. And we're many years behind the ability to release a commercial robot like the Aibo.
Not to be too serious, but it looks like we will have a lot of ground to recover when this type of thing catches on...
The ______ Agenda
Actually...
NFL Chronology 1869-1910
Wanders off whistling, hands in pockets
Sports don't have to be described by their names but it's really useful (basketball, baseball, athletism...), and it's awfully confusing when the name describes a different thing.
Regarding cricket: Wherever the name 'cricket' came from - and from the various theories 'cricce', Anglo-Saxon for a stick, is the generally accepted origin. It can be assumed that it was played before it was called cricket.
Assuming that, it's a reasonable name for a game played with a (very big and heavy) stick.
Wrong...
Gee, wonder what country that's from.
which says:
1869
Rutgers and Princeton played a college soccer football game, the first ever, November 6. The game used modified London Football Association rules. During the next seven years, rugby gained favor with the major eastern schools over soccer, and modern football began to develop from rugby.
1876
At the Massasoit convention, the first rules for American football were written. Walter Camp, who would become known as the father of American football, first became involved with the game.
So, American Football (Gridiron) is based on Rugby, which is a sibling of Football (the game where you kick the ball all the time).
Right... so it's more appropriate to call gridiron football than a sport which has existed for well over a century, played worldwide more than any other and consists almost entirely of people kicking a ball with their feet.
You'll notice Asimo was designed to look and act like a human, while this soccer robot was designed to 1) identify ball, and 2) move ball to goal. Asimo is supposed to interact with humans and have more autonomous thinking than just moving a ball around. Not to mention the surface area of those feet and hands looks to be about 300% comparitively by size with the Asimo.
The West Indies need some of these robots, providing they can be taught to play cricket. In fact, we would benefit from them even if they can't be taught to play cricket! As it stands, my dog would make a grand addition to the team, because he can catch the ball. OK, he can't bat worth shit, but neither can any of the current team members...
I am not to comfortable with a robot that can defend it self, punch and show shame that it didnt rip your balls ( it just popped your eyes out )....scray times yet to come...
If they didn't wear body armour, game time wouldn't be nearly as long as it is due to all of the injuries that happen occur. Keep in mind that American football is a full contact sport. And even with all the armour players wear, there is always injuries.
But hey, if you want to play the game without protection against a bunch of ogres...then be my guest. But when you get hurt, don't bitch about it on slashdot.
Life is not for the lazy.
I was having a shit day and you have more than cheered me up. Bravo.
How long before can add miniature artillary for a little live-action MechWarrior?
OK, let's settle this soccer/football naming thing once and for all. Dallas Cowboys vs. Manchester United, both playing their own version of football. Winner gets to keep the name.
The above post and its moderation makes my point just fine.
Don't you think that the vids look bit too much like stop-motion animations :)
btw it's FOOTBALL dammit!
Except that American football has nothing to do with a foot kicking a ball, unless it's the nerdy guy who comes out like once a game to kick a field goal, misses, and has to carry the weight of the world on his sorry back for the rest of his miserable life. Now that's what I call football.
Robotic Soccer's answer to the World Cup - it's called Robocup
Many universities take part in this event and the cup's mission is to "...develop a team of fully autonomous humanoid robots that can win against the human world soccer champion team by 2050..."
Hrmm..
This could have two possible meanings..
a) It can physically access a computer system, pop in a CD and install linux.
or, slightly less interesting...
b) Have linux installed and running on its onboard CPU.
Watch the videos again. There are strings.... you can see them in most of the videos. I can't tell if there is enough tension on them to indicate these are really just PUPPETS; but at the very least, it's a dramatically less impressive feat to have a robot that requires guide wires!
nt
Why!? Why?! Why was I programmed to feel shame?
"when life gets complicated, I like to take a nap in a tree and wait for dinner" - Hobbes.
That would seem fair.
Power vs. Speed.
It's not a display of shame, it's the finishing blows to the Asimo it tripped over with a bad tackle...
Soccer players also FELLATE EACH OTHER on the field!
Let's see...
2. Create soccer playing robots.
3. ????
4. Profit!...No, that doesn't seem to work.
In Soviet Russia, the robot uses you as the soccer ball...No, that doesn't either.
These are not the robots you're looking for...Nope.
Oh, I got it. I for one welcome our new soccer robot overlords.
That makes them more talented than I am.
http://www.accountkiller.com/removal-requested
Personally, I didn't think this was very impressive. Sure, they can program a robot to look cute while it _slowly_ picks up a ball and throws it, but how about catching it?
It's because HandBall was already taken.
The above is not worth reading.
That's what he's saying. Football (the game where you kick the ball all the time (soccer)) and Rugby are variations on a theme. American "football" was later derived from Rugby.
on detail. Does anyone know how you program this thing?
Depending upon the sophistication of tools they might or might not have, it could be relatively easy or suck large.
And what about the cost? I couldn't really find anything, but several sites note that these things are indeed for sale.
Apparently they are selling two different robots, and also have one that is designed to be covered in material approximating human skin. That one can
Nifty stuff.
A message from our sponsor
While we're at it, I'm pretty sure we're missing the point by arguing whether it is demonstrating the ability to play soccer or football, since it was in fact a contestant in Bandai's annual Robo-One where the goal was to have little anthropomorphic (.PNG) robots pummel (.MPG) the crap (.MPG) out of each other to win by TKO. Dig around the sites and you'll find piles of highly entertaining videos.
For those of you who can't stomach anthropomorphic robot on anthropomorphic robot violence, click here for footage of the little suckers particpating in non-combative activities.
BBC has something about robotic footballers; http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/3591031.stm "UK Hosts First National Robot Football Championship" http://www.newsandevents.warwick.ac.uk/index.cfm?p age=151
These are completely autonomous devices that play against each other. They come in teams developed by various british universities.
Go Warwick!
That's kind of a weak argument.... Reguardless of whether he came here or not he did name the continent.
The darkness... controls the music. The music... controls the soul.
It does make your point..... but then it makes his too....
The darkness... controls the music. The music... controls the soul.
It's FIFA, not FISA. And it's a WORLD federation, not a NATIONAL federation.
Poor English on the NFL's part: Association Football is the feet variety. What the sentence following means is that rugby took over from football in popularity. So football is still the prior art.
Vespucci did come to America, only it was South America and not North America. He was a cartographer sent by the Spanish crown to map the "New World", and he was the one who realized that it was a whole new continent, and not some part of Asia as Columbus thought. (Columbus' calculations for the distance to Asia were way off).
Therefore, Americo Vespucci was the one who actually "discovered" America (the continent), so it was eventually named after him.
Maybe the argument you disagree with is my opinion that "American" Football is a little misleading since the people of most of the countries of the continent that Americo "discovered" do not know or care about that sport.
Well thank for the high school history lesson ;) but I really am not too worried about where Vespucci did or did not come. The fact is that in common usage the term "America" refers to the United States. So the term "American Football" logically applies to the sport that "Americans" call football.
The darkness... controls the music. The music... controls the soul.
In the USA, the term "America" refers to the United States. In other places, "America" refers to the continent, and people from other "American" countries call themselves "American". When referring to U.S. citizens, they use other terms.
This goes as far as replacing the terms in translations of Hollywood movies (which looks rather funny when the movies are subtitled). And they will look at you as if you had lost your mind if you use the America==USA definition. Also, they have never heard of a sport called "soccer".
But, well, I guess we are all entitled to have diverging opinions... :)
Unless your picture has been on the cover of Chess Life, Deep Fritz will trounce you.
They're not QuickTimes, you know.
There are not several different sports. Football is football. Australian football is that game that looks like rugby, but only people from Australia watch. American football likewise, but only people from the US watch it.
The only ones who have the same name for two sports are the US, the rest of the world have no problem.
Anyway, I don't think anybody from outside the US watches American Football, at least in Latin American ESPN and ESPN2, it's easier to find table tennis than it is American Footbal, so when they announce "futbol en ESPN" we all know what they are talking about.