Peoples Republic of South Devon

FC-3PO?

June 13th, 2008

The weekly technology column from those good people at Plymouth’s
Orange Crate

In October 1992 a group of Japanese researchers organized a workshop in Tokyo to discuss challenges in the area of artificial technology. This gathering promptly gave birth to a serious discussion about using the medium of football to promote science and technology, and within nine months rules had been drafted, feasibility studies run, and prototype models designed.

And with great interest from scientific communities around the world, the Robot Soccer World Cup, or ‘RoboCup’ was born. The grand aim is to create, by the mid-21st century, a team of fully autonomous humanoid robot soccer players who, by complying with the official rules of FIFA, will beat the winning team of the most recent FIFA World Cup.Sounds crazy doesn’t it? The idea of current robots outplaying the likes of recent Italian World Cup winners Alessandro Del Piero and Fabio Cannavaro is nothing short of laughable. But the folks at RoboCup have an interesting defence of their scheme. As they point out, it only took 50 years to get from the Wright brothers first aircraft to Apollo missions to send man to the moon. Likewise it took just 50 years from the invention of the digital computer to the creation of IBM’s Deep Blue, which beat reigning chess champion Garry Kasparov. And as the organizers rightfully assert, it’s important to set ambitious long term goals to be pursued and grappled with.

The RoboCup consists of a range of competitions based on size, technical ability and development, but arguably the pinnacle of the various classes is Humanoid League, where teams are formed by either two ‘kid-sized’ or ‘teen-sized’ robots. The winners of the 2 on 2 league in the 2007 meeting in Atlanta was Team NimBro from the University of Freiburg in Germany, who beat Team Osaka from Osaka University by a close margin of eight goals to six – sounds like both teams need to work on their defence, Alan Hanson would be livid…

Thirty seven countries were represented in 2007 and this looks set to grow for this years competition in China. Regardless of the conceivability of RoboCup’s founding goal, the resulting benefits of the events are undeniable. As Tucker Balch, last years general chair summarised, “One of RoboCup’s great strengths is it’s international flavour. We are able to get people together from many countries and backgrounds to share our research and ideas for making robots more effective.”

So, what are the odds are on the result of the 2051 inter-humanoid world cup being ‘Robo All Stars 3-0 Brazil’…?

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Entry Filed under: technology