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Robo World Cup Underway 75

Posted by Hemos from the battle-of-the-bots dept.
daveb writes "According to newswire the Robo World Cup discussed last month is now underway. There's fuller details and streaming quicktime video at the robocup2000 home page"
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Robo World Cup Underway More

Robo World Cup Underway

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  • Well since your new here, don't forget to question about grits, Portman, penis birds and Signal 11 as well.

    Some things will never be understood.

    Thank you for your time and consideration.
  • Absolutely, But they thing they need most is audience participation. It would be a lot more fun to be there if I could start throwing things at the slow chunky robot bringing up the rear. Survival of the fittest.

  • There's a piece about kids programming Lego Mindstorms at last years RoboCup in Sweden, where they found that 7-14 year old non-nerd non-geek children were able to program them to score a goal in ~30 minutes or so. Here's the link [daimi.au.dk]. If only they had that kind of fun when I was that age...

  • Yep, those guys are geeks ;) I first read about this contest in Scientific American. It was just a little piece but it's here [sciam.com] and it doesn't require registration.

    As an alum I'd love to see this get more widespread exposure --wish it existed back in my day!

    --

  • Seems you've NEVER seen a south american soccer match. Specially on viewers. Common is a killing a month or more.

    It's also nice the police beating the crap out of ppl from horses with BIG sticks...

  • I helped Yale's team get their two computers networking to each other before they left, so I've seen their setup.

    In the F-180 league, anyways, the AI is not done on the bot itself. Teams get a camera mounted above the playing surface which sends the image to the computer. The computer then makes the decisions and sends the info to the robots via RF. Color markings on top of Yale's bots help with identifying bot orientation as well as identification; after all, you need to know which bot you're looking at and which one you're going to move!

    This year the rules changed to make the walls at a 45 degree angle to discourage bounce shots; I believe the intention is to do away with walls completely in future comptetitions. Next year the competition is in the US somewhere.

    It's really cool to see these boxes on wheels driven by vcr motors chase after the golf balls. Maybe not as thrilling as Robot Wars [robotwars.com], but thrilling nonetheless.

  • though I wish I could find official rules somewhere
    Poke around the official site at: RoboCup Org [robocup.org]. Follow the links to the league you find most 'appealing' [league: see below].
    [snip] that these are controlled by an off-field computer but at least their behavior doesn't seem to be modified by humans at runtime.
    There are (mainly) three Leagues:

    Simulation: Pure agent based AI programming: 11 agents vs 11 agents kicking the same virtual ball. The league with most participates because people can concentrate on cooperation, learning etc without worrying about screws and bolts. Also the cheapest!! (no hardware)

    Small-Size: Overhead camera observes the pitch (size of ping pong table). Bottom line is that there is an external computer that grabbs the frames from that camera, parses it for the relevant information, decides for ALL of the robots and then sends out the commands. Implementations (agent-based vs centralized computation) vary, but then to be the first.

    Middle-Size: Autonomous team of 4 robotic agents. ALL sensing must be done in _each_ robot. Communication among the robots is allowed (via wireless), but not with external sources! Scientific Areas range from Obstacle Avoidance to Self-localization methods (ie, finding out where a robot is in the pitch...) ... the list is quite extensive in this league. [For more information: Homepage for Middle Size League [uni-ulm.de]]

    Filipe
  • Lots of Linux!
    Indeed!!! The overwhelming majority of teams have some form of Linux distro. Usually, some form of RedHat.

    The few teams that do not use Linux, such as Sharif CE or U. Minho, are hardcore DOS fans that are forced into writing drivers for the wireless network and/or Bt848 frame grabber.

    Filipe

    (One of the best experiences was doing tcpdump and seeing loads of IP's (from the various robots) using a wireless channel... )
  • Robocup = Autonomous, nonviolent robots pushing a ball into a goal

    or

    Battlebots = Violent radio controlled bots beating the crap out of each other with axes, chainsaws, and spikes...

    This is a no brainer.
  • Will tomorrow's entertainment industry be wrestling and soccer using robots? Just think, instead of them making all the money, people using Linux and reading Slashdot could cash in developing robot code! I'd program my robot to clean my freakin' bathroom.
  • ..if David Beckham is worried? All they have to do is stick a foppish wig on the bot and the Man Utd boss will be offering 80million quid transfer fees..
  • now that the sports and movie indstries have begun using robots, the porn industry should be getting in too: "hey man, check the cards on that bot!"

    just my $.015
  • I think as brutality is removed from competition (note the progression of American football to it's ultra-padded, semi-armored status) we begin to lust for destructive combat. Let's face it, the human race is a violent destructive species that is used to fighting wars over trivial things. As the effects of war become devastating, we turn to athletic competition. As athletic competition becomes too docile, we seek something else. Violent movies, video games, and the like are just attempt to live out that violent aspect inside of us vicariously.

    Professional wrestling is another manefestation of this, but in such events, we can only suspend our disbelief so long. Thankfully, we now can turn to robots to live out our fantasies of war without the ill-effects. Watching two pieces of metal, plastic, and silicon smash into each other, send parts flying, and in all essence, 'kick ass', gives us that satisfaction. We want to be the ones tearing up the opposition, but since we no longer have a society where that is acceptable, our surrogates will do it for us.

    Will there be human vs. robot competition? Yes, but it will be on the level of chess matches or lame American Gladiator type of stuff.

  • You're forgetting that every year, less and less people watch the Olympics
    Yeh, this seems to be a 4 year cycle... Odd how viewing figures are high for one year and then really low for the next three...

    Should I insert a smiley here?

  • The Olympics are cool if you can avoid watching it on american network coverage. God what a load of flag waving. Only americans can win, and when they don't... Well they should have but...

    Thank you CBC for providing relatively non-biased coverage..
  • And the first 500 guests get a complimentary hand grenade.

    --
  • Interact 2000 was a wank this year, previous years have been good, companies like Adobe, Macromedia...

    It's meant to be an Multimedia Festival. Instead this year we got Telstra BigPond, Creative, and 3dfx, a couple of small shop graphic firms, and a bunch of noname small PC shops hawking goods. I was HUGELY disappointed...

  • There is a game out there that consists of programming simulated robots to perform in different tasks, one of them is a 2 vs. 2 hockey game.
    Check out http://www.cognitoy.com
  • You're forgetting that every year, less and less people watch the Olympics.

    Quite possibly due to it only being held every four years ;-)

  • the firefighting robot competition at [snip]
    The RoboCup Org [robocup.org] has recently created a new league, which is still pretty much alpha at this time, to simulate urban disaster, hereby shifting the stage of the problem from cooperating soccer robots to "real-life" cooperating agents. Quoting from http://robomec.cs.kobe-u.ac.jp/roboc up-rescue/ [kobe-u.ac.jp]:
    RoboCup-Rescue Simulation Project is a new practical domain of RoboCup. A generic urban disaster simulation environment is constructed on network computers. Heterogeneous intelligent agents such as fire fighters, commanders, victims, volunteers, etc. conduct search and rescue activities in this virtual disaster world. Various people worldwide participate in this simulator as an entertainment, a training, or an education via the internet. This project contributes not only to enlightenment of citizens but also to accrate damage prediction, decision support in real disaster, systematic real time monitoring of actual damages, and emergence of better disaster prevention strategies. A diverse spectrum of possibilities of this technology will contribute to the creation of the safer social system in the future.
    This league is going to be very interesting BTW. And of course, a good cooperation model developed for the soccer robots can be exntesible to the Rescue project.

    Filipe
  • Past Editions
    (with winning Middle-size team)

    RoboCup 97: Nagoya : Dreamteam ISI/USC (USA) and
    Osaka Trackies (Japan)
    RoboCup 98: Paris : CS Freiburg (Germany)
    RoboCup 99: Stockholm : Sharif CE (Iran)
    EuRoboCup 2000: Amsterdam : Sharif CE (Iran)

    Present:
    RoboCup 2000: Melbourne : [place your bets..]

    Future:
    RoboCup 2001: Seattle
    RoboCup 2002: Somewhere in Japan [?] (Osaka?)
    RoboCup 2003: [?]
    RoboCup 2004: Lisbon
  • BattleBots is fun (I went to the live taping of a show here in San Francisco), but it's not very impressive, technology-wise. My main problem with it is that the robots are just radio-controlled by humans, so it doesn't get into any of the interesting problems that other events like RoboCup do (sensing, reacting, making goals(heh)). It's just like radio controlled cars with buzz-saws bolted on (which IS fun, but I wouldn't really call them robots).

    - Isaac =)

  • I checked out a couple of RoboCup games yesterday ... the "legged league" seems to get all the attention because the players look like cute little doggies, but from what I saw their most outstanding feature was the ability to fall over amusingly (although to be fair they do get up again pretty quick).

    The f-180 and f-2000 leagues (robots with wheels) are way cool though... the game between Sharif University from Iran and Melbourne's RMIT United yesterday had everyone on the edge of their seats yelling "go 17!" and "get out of the goal 23!". Seems unfair though that when bits fall off the robots they just get removed from the field ... shouldn't they be allowed injury time?

  • today we live in a balance of power system, there are 3 groups that hold power, consumers, with their money, corporations, with their products and media outlets, and government with its regulation and taxation powers. Right now, the corporate aspect has become too powerful, while the government and consumer aspects have become less powerful, in response it is necessary to combine the consumers power with government power and strengthen one or both in order to reduce the power, and hence the corrupting ability, of corporations. Nader would do both, he would increase the power and independance of the government with respect to corporations and would also help incease the power of consumers.

  • yeah, everything sucked except the free coffee and donuts and the robosoccer. oh, and those multimedia armchairs.

  • Robots playing soccer?
    The next thing you know, they'll be building cars! (grin)

    MAB
  • I'd never bunch of bunch of semi-autonomous, sharp pieces of metal in my underwear. ... Oh, it's not that kind of RoboCup?
    --
  • I wanna see those suckers play hockey! Robots on ice with attitude! Then when one of them gets ticked off, they would start fighting a la those Robot Wars! The only problem would be cleaning up the mess and putting the loser back together again and in the Penalty box.

  • Anyone find where the hi-res quicktime stuff is? The links on the page are broken, can only view the tiny-really-grainy ones.

    Aibo's playing soccer.. how cool is that.
  • I wonder how many robofans get trampled watching the game....


    -- "Almost everyone is an idiot. If you think I'm exaggerating, then you're one of them."
  • As everyone knows, elementary chaos theory states that all robots must eventually turn on their human masters!
  • just had an idea: after this RoboCup, if the organizers could save the robots and develop some sort of interface for them so that they could be controlled via the web...they could have robot soccer matches that folks could get the opportunity to sign up for and play. each person would be able to control a robot on a team during a game...imagine web-cams, strategy, chat...

  • The 4th World Robot Soccer Championships and Workshop, RoboCup 2000 Melbourne, will be the most interesting sporting event that will be held in Australia this year.

    Umm... what about the Olympics??


    -- "Almost everyone is an idiot. If you think I'm exaggerating, then you're one of them."
  • You know, I'm quite surprised that finally we have a decent IT/technology thing in my home town. We've been robbed of a lot of nice technological exhibitions and trade shows (only Sydney has been getting them recently), and even out current trade show is a little lacking (www.interact2000.com.au), which is on right now.

    In fact, I'm heading in there tomorrow, and might check out RoboCup while I'm at it.

    -tsg
  • ComedyCentral [comedycentral.com] has a great new series now called 'BattleBots [comedycentral.com]' where you try to destroy the other robot. [Sounds more fun to me =) ] Its on wednesdays, so check it out tonight!
  • I can't imagine that watching robots playing soccer is too much fun. We should just stick with the good stuff.

    Robot fighting! Nothing better than watching a giant razor cut through another robot sending shrapnel all over the battlefield.

  • Are we going to get this every year?

    This isn't the first time the competition has been held, and it's been getting a couple postings to the front page on /.

    I guess it's not as bad has getting three stories linking to a dot matrix symphony, but . . .

    --

  • The BattleBots are the RoboSoccer Hooligans.
    ___
  • Challenge the newsworthiness of an article such as this one.
  • To Quote Loki in "Dogma":
    Any moron with a pack of matches can start a fire. Raining down sulfur takes a huge level of endurance. Mass genocide is the most exhausting activity one can engage in, next to soccer.


    -- "Almost everyone is an idiot. If you think I'm exaggerating, then you're one of them."
  • I think this is going to be shown tonight on comedy central at 1030PM est, at any rate they are showing robots battling it out to the death, kickass

  • In the UK we have the rather poor "Robowars" on TV. All the robots are submitted by gormless geeks and sad old men. I'm sure the Robot World Cup is much the same...
  • It seems to me that what makes soccer so much fun to watch is that it is such an awkward game... people trying to move a sphere around with their feet.

    Watching robots that were designed specifically for moving a sphere around sounds less exiting to me.

    Now, get those robots to kick the crap out of each other, and you've got something to watch. [robotwars.com]

  • Mainland europe refuses to grant visas to English robots. Damned robotic soccer hooligans....

    I've always considered ManU fans to be robotic (ie mindless automotons).... ;)

  • Wir sind die Roboter... (Score:4)

    by mirko ( 198274 ) on Wednesday August 30, 2000 @05:56AM (#816822) Journal
    Were there robot-hooligans attending the matchs ?
    --
  • No, there weren't any Robo-Hooligans, but I did hear that the soda machines were acting up a bit.

    Viva La Machine!

  • There are actually two types of robot soccer competition.

    One competition uses a global camera mounted above the field of play. The computer tells the difference between each robots by the color on the robot.

    This competition states that the camera must be mounted on the robot itself.
  • Hey... a few guys in my engineering program actually did this last year for their project! In the competition I saw the robot squirt a water gun to put out a candle somewhere on a flat area.

    I found the link [utoronto.ca] for one of the groups who did this,
    and the assignment page here [utoronto.ca].


  • Dictionary definitions vary, but to me a robot is an autonomous unit. These are close - I gather (though I wish I could find official rules somewhere) that these are controlled by an off-field computer but at least their behavior doesn't seem to be modified by humans at runtime.

    Nothing like "Battlebots", which has gone by other names in the past and is really just a bunch of destructive radio controlled cars and IMO shouldn't be allowed to use the term "robot" at all. Mildly entertaining to watch, but it has nothing to do with the field of Robotics, which to me is the interesting bit.
  • You forgot that the reason the Humans survived, WON, was because of their short lifespans, they also had a higher reproductive rate, and were better able to withstand disruptions to their populations like the ice ages, diseases, and the Wars. Also, because humans were more violent and vicious, they tended to START more of the wars, which tactically gave them the element of suprise more often than not, so more often than not, they won based on that. Another factor that caused the humans to start more wars, was that since they were so short-lived, they didn't tend to remember the devestation caused by previous wars 30-50 years earlier - plus for some reason, even though they had shorter lives, they were more willing to die, especially in battle, the element of being able to sacrifice troops was often very decisive. Religion may have played a role there, because it promised an eternal afterlife.

    Perhaps the greatest advantage the humans had over their dwarven and elvish foes; the humans WEREN'T IMAGINARY CREATURES!

    if it ain't broke, then fix it 'till it is!
  • You can play your own version of RoboCup using the JavaBots package [cmu.edu] from Carnegie Mellon University. All you need is JDK 1.1 or better running on any box. I know I had fun with this when I was a grad student!

    The Tyrrany Begins.... [fearbush.com]
  • For those interested in the concepts/theories behind teamplay, strategy etc for Robocup entrants, a few months ago, AI Magazine had an excellent article about the competition plus indepth articles from CMU and other teams.

    It also had an article about the Sony Aibo league as well.

    It turns out there's a simulator league, an Aibo league (which was demonstration only) and a handbuilt league-of interest, the Aibo league used vision systems integrated in the Sony testbed-the article mentioned that the dogs can recognize and track points in space using YUV colour processing. One handbuilt entrant included custom chasses with built in Toshiba Librettos as main processors, others used embedded boards.

    Anyways, an interesting read if you can find at your local university library. It's published by the AAAI, but they're not online... :(

    --Calum

  • Robots? These are RC cars from the mad max movies. I'm sure its lots of *yawn* fun to watch.
  • If anyone's in the GTA/Southern Ontario area and is interested in Lego robotics (building or just watching), I invite you to visit the 6th Annual Lego Robotics Event later this month.

    Check out our webpage. http://peach.mie.ut oronto.ca/events/lego/lego-091600-rules.html [utoronto.ca]

    Calum

  • Before I get flamed, this was supposed to be a reply for a battlebots post. My mistake.
  • The link in parent was bad, so I did a search of JavaBots on the CMU cs website. The resulting JavaBots page said "JavaBots has been superceded by TeamBots [teambots.org]. Please visit the TeamBots."

    Enjoy.

  • And the lycra... oh, and the gateway cows... good target practice...
  • You forget. This is Comedy Central, not Discovery Channel.

  • Robot sports are making their way into the mainstream.

    High school geeks can compete in FIRST [usfirst.org] robot competitions through a school club. The radio controlled robots which are programmed in modified BASIC are made to pick up balls and place them in their goal. The team with the most balls wins the match. The competition was aired on the NASA/Government channel.

    Some sort of robot fighting event was on pay per view a few months ago too.

  • Just need a RoboPosh to go with it...
  • It would be fun if they combined this with BATTLEBOTS. [battlebots.com]
    Then it would be more like real life soccor (football or whatever you call it in your local)!

  • And keep in mind... (Score:4)

    by ciaohound ( 118419 ) on Wednesday August 30, 2000 @05:24AM (#816839)
    the firefighting robot competition at Trinity College in Hartford CT. The rules for the 2001 competition will be posted on September 1. From the official web page [trincoll.edu]: "This is the largest, public, true Robotics competition held in the U.S. that is open to entrants of any age, ability or experience from anywhere in the world... The goal of the 2001 contest is the same - to build a Robot that can find and extinguish a fire in a house. The challenge for the entrants is to build a computerized (not radio-controlled) Robotic device that can move through a model of a single floor of a house, detect fire (a lit candle) and then put it out. Robots that consistantly accomplish this task in the shortest time win."

    --
  • oh come on, be honest, the Olympics might be exciting but are they really all that intresting?
  • Umm... what about the Olympics??

    You're forgetting that every year, less and less people watch the Olympics. Apparently, when people don't watch them, they fail to remember that they exist.

    Anyway, it probably will be more interesting than the Olympics.
  • The next thing you know, they'll be building cars!

    Cars? Whaddya mean by cars? I thought they was called "horseless carriages"!

    In my time, we had to manipulate the ino^H^H^Hwheels with magnets!


    --
    this post was brought to you by Andreas Fuchs.

  • (Well okay maybe not but I can't think of one for here... :)

    Several teams from my school have been working on this for a couple of years now. They've got a page up at this link [usouthal.edu].

    Interestingly -- to me at least -- they aren't actually working with robots, but rather software automata that can somewhere down the line be used as the brains for autonomous soccer playing robots. To that end, they set it up so they can play a server and students can all write their own soccer playing clients that work together on teams. They're amusingly bad, but encouraging as well -- you can see where things might lead.

    The home page [usouthal.edu] for the research groups has some neat stuff as well. Whoa -- they even link to my old project [192.245.222.131]! Ain't that nice of them... :)

    Anyway, point being is that RoboCup is a big, worldwide research effort and it's not all just hardware. Interesting stuff...



  • The reason RoboCup is a lot more interesting IMHO is that they actually have to control real robots to do real things - they have to cope with all of the fuzziness of the real world. Software automata can get away with things - always knowing where the ball is perfectly, having a "move forward for 0.2s" instruction always move you forward the same distance, etc etc.
  • It's much harder to bribe robots than Olympic officials.

  • I had great expectations for the premiere of BattleBots, but the first show kind of disappointed me. Sure, the few minutes of robot action were neat: robots spinning, buzzsaws cutting, ramrod whacking action. However, the rest of the show was completely fluff. Annoying fluff. For example, when they were going to "show how the robots worked", instead of demonstrating the mechanics of the robot "Discovery" style, they flashed through a collage of insider buzzwords designed to stupify and astound their audience. I guess they were trying to impress us with the technical wizardry of the combatants, but I'd rather see a more clear-cut demonstration of the actual robot strategies. Hopefully, as the show progresses, they will have more battles and offer a more genuine peek into the workings of the robots. They can't maintain an audience on filler for long. (can they?)


    --David M. Moore

  • Kenny Baker (Score:4)

    by i-Chaos ( 179440 ) on Wednesday August 30, 2000 @05:29AM (#816847)
    In related news: the dismissal of Kenny Baker as R2D2 from the cast of Star Wars has allowed him to persue other possibilities. Baker says, "If I can play R2D2 in Star Wars, I can play R2D2 in a soccer field! I'm going to enter the RoboCup and kick some ass. My strategy? I'm going to bump and bumble into all the robots and get them worked up like C3P0."
  • Something for Kenny Baker to do with all that free time he has on his hands now!

    -JD
  • I was poking around at the Science Museum in London the day after their new "Wellcome Wing" opened, and I got on a tour of the then-still-under-construction floor about computers. There's was some nifty stuff (fingerpint recognition, facial scanning and remodeling, sound distortion, etc.), but the coolest part for me was this one alcove where a guy sat, playing with an Aibo. Apparently, his job was to train the thing to be nice to people and do interesting things.
    Anyway, he hands me the pink ball that the dog supposedly liked and said, "Here... show this to him, and he'll try to play football with it" (or something like that). So I hold the ball out the robotic critter, and suddenly it spins around, its eyes glowing red, and it rears up on its hind legs and paws furiously at the air, making distraught noises.
    I'm sure "Satan mode" is not included in the user manual...

    Anyway, let's hope they're nicer to the referrees.
    BTW, I eventually got it kicking the ball. (sidenote: to be really mean, show it the ball, let it set up for a kick, then snatch the ball away. The aibo will follow through on the kick, then get all depressive because it didn't kick the ball.)
    -J
  • It would probably be more interesting if they all had an axe and a flamethrower!

    Or perhaps even a mod'ed potato cannon to fire the ball.

    --

  • I'm consistently curious about comments like this. I clearly understand the drudgery of reading about the same subject every week, but if there are different aspects, updates, or if it is regarding the same event a year later, then what is the big deal?

    I'm new here, so I guess I haven't had to live through seeing the same story put up over and over. With that one caveat, I am not saying your point isn't worth considering, but because I am new I haven't seen this story and was glad to have been clued in on it.

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