RoboCup 2001 Underway

Dan B writes: "RoboCup 2001, the fifth international competition, is underway. The competition is held from August 2nd through the 10th at the Washington State Convention and Trade Center in Seattle, Washington, USA. International teams compete their autonomous soccer-playing robots in three different leagues including Sony Legged League (remember the cute puppies?). The competition is open to the public, so if you happen to be near Seattle, check it out."

Re:Other Sports

[Captain Bonzo]

Wouldnt it be interesting to see some other sports too? Perhaps a decatholon?

In the UK we have had a thing called the 'Robot Games', which was a whole load of 'robot' (mostly remote controlled devices, but a few genuinely computer controlled) events including swimming, running, rope climbing, high and long jumps, mouse mazes, and so on. Some of it was a bit naff but it was great fun to watch.

IJCAI

[SuperJ]

RoboCup is only one part of IJCAI. [ijcai-01.org] Another interesting event taking place at IJCAI is the AAAI [aaai.org] Mobile Robot Competition [cmu.edu] for urban search and rescue (USAR) robots. They have to navigate three courses developed at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). [nist.gov] The courses have proved extremely difficult for autonomous robots to navigate.

RoboCup 2001 in the News

[Observer2001]

Here are some pointers to media reporting on RoboCup 2001 (a few items discuss related events):

"Robo-cup" [npr.org] (audio, requires player) by Lee Gutkind, National Public Radio, Weekend All Things Considered, 28 July 2001

"RoboCup 2001 Marks SGI's Second Year of RoboCup Federation Sponsorship" [prnewswire.com] (press release), PR Newswire, 1 August 2001

"Robot Competitors Meet on a Soccer Field of Dreams" [nytimes.com] (free registration required) by Jeffrey Selingo, New York Times, 2 August 2001

"RoboCup: Where Bots Kick Butt" [lycos.com] by Jason Spingarn-Koff, Lycos News, 2 August 2001

"Rush is on for 'HAL'-like computer to perfect A.I." [nwsource.com] by Winda Benedetti, Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 3 August 2001

"Robot world cup kicks off" [bbc.co.uk], BBC, 3 August 2001

"RoboCup 2001 boots up" [nature.com] by Helen Pearson, Nature Science Update, 3 August 2001

"Blutgrätschen ohne Blut und Beine" [stern.de], stern.de, 3 August 2001

"Roboter aus 23 Ländern tragen Fußballweltmeisterschaft aus" [net-business.de], Net-Business Online, 3 August 2001

"RoboCup 2001, il calcio visto dai robot" [punto-informatico.it], Punto Informatico, 3 August 2001

"Building a better goalie (buzz, whir)" [nwsource.com] by Gregory Roberts, Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 4 August 2001

"Man and machine take the field" [nwsource.com] by David Olsen, Seattle Times, 4 August 2001

"Robots Storm the Soccer Field" [techtv.com] by Maria Godoy, TechTV/Tech Live, 6 August 2001

Information about live Webcast of Botball finals [nasa.gov] (an event distinct from Robocup) on 7-8 August

Galleries good enough?

[piehole]

Don't know about video feeds, but the UW team has a page [washington.edu] linking a few galleries and such.

More info

[boaworm]

For those of you who hasn't read the whole story I can tell this is a very international competition. I'm a M.Sc student in Sweden, and at my university here we've had a RoboCup competition for a few years as well. It is a very good way to learn how to write autonome agents (football players), and gives a good insight in how AI "works".

For those of you interrested in trying this at home (yes you can :-) the software is available for download. You can run the "server" on both Unix and Windows. Its just to write a few players and get rockin!
For those who just wants to see how it all works, there are also old teams to download. Go fetch [robocup.org]!

See it if you can!

[LenE]

The goal of this competition is to eventually develop robots and AI that would be capable of competing with a human soccer team. It's a bit scaled down and unrealistic for now, but the machines are getting better every year.

Our team here at Cornell has one the last two international competitions for the small (not AIBO) class robots, in fact, they haven't lost a game yet (although I'm not sure how they're doing right now). Thier team consists of five omnidirectional player robots and one unidirectional (like foozball) goalie robot, all less than one foot in diameter.

The playing field that they use is about one and a half times larger than a ping-pong table, and their class uses a fluorescent orange golf ball for a soccer ball. The players aren't allowed to touch the players on the other team, and none of the robots are permitted to grab the ball (it must remain un-restrained).

A camera is mounted midfield, to give both teams the same video feed. Our entire team is controlled remotely by two computers. One is dedicated to processing the video feed while the other computer does the AI and remote controll of the robots. Unfortunately, they use NT for both because the drivers for their video capture card don't exist yet under Linux.

-- Len