If you're a soccer fan, you can almost taste the excitement, right? I mean, the World Cup is coming up in just a few months time in South Africa. Ah....but it you're robotic soccer fan (and let's face it, who isn't?) then you might be looking forward to Singapore too. That's because the Asian nation will host RoboCup 2010 in June, during the actual World Cup. There are many different categories in this robotic competition, which has been going on since 1997. But one of my favorite events is the KidSize Humanoid league, which matches up teams of three robots that are anywhere from one to two feet tall. The teams play on a field that is roughly 13 X 20 feet, and try to kick the ball into a goal that's about 4 feet across. One of the best teams in the world in this division comes from the Free University (FU) in Berlin, and they are called FUmanoids (previously called the FU-fighters). They design and build the robots, and program them to try to play together as a team. The 'bots are not remote controlled. They are programmed to see color, so they can determine which machines are on their team (see the color coding in the picture), and they can see the orange ball. You need to see this video to get a flavor of the state of play:
"The challenges are huge," concedes FUmanoid team member Stefan Otte. "I think people enjoy watching the robots fall down more than anything. The walking is not so stable, and the 'bots only have a certain field of vision. Plus the on-board CPU for each robot is not so big. But I've seen great progress in just the last few years, and we'll get there eventually."
Where is there? Well, the official goal of the RoboCup competition is to field a robotic team that can beat a human team by the year 2050. Otte admits that is extremely ambitious, and that there is a long way to go. But along the way, he says, what researchers are learning about robotic motion, vision recognition and working in teams has many applications for robotics in the real world.
No word, yet, by the way, on whether anyone is also trying to program a robotic soccer hooligan who can drink massive amounts of alcohol, start fights and get arrested. But, we can dream, right?
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