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Robocup 2008 Droids Cooperate Like Real Soccer Team, With Fewer Hissy Fits
Posted by Kit Eaton at 7:22 PM on July 21, 2008
Miniature humanoid robots are getting more impressive by the day: this video shows the Darmstadt Dribblers team in action in the recent 2008 Robocup. And if you notice, they're really playing like proper autonomous soccer teams. It's the first year that three on three playing action has happened, and thus required some nifty role negotiation and info exchange over wi-fi. That's in addition to avoiding obstacles, finding the ball visually and trying to score goals. Ok, so that opposing team needs a better goalie, but at least watching this robotic version of the beautiful game means you get to see less diving and hissy fits at the referee. Impressive stuff, no? [YouTube.—Thanks Stefan]
Tags: football | games | robocup | robots | soccer | wi-fi | wireless
Comments (AU Comments · US Comments)
Matt Turner
Posted August 15, 2008 11:00 AM
This is only consistent with the goal of having a robot soccer team beat the human world champion team by 2050 (the ultimate goal of this competition). I believe it will be achieved long before that. The advancement of algorithms for object recognition, autonomous navigation combined with the ever increasing processing power of AI, improving mechanical abilities of humanoid robots will bring robots into our daily lives pretty soon. One just need to look at a couple years back in ths event as well as say, DARPA grand challenge for autonomous vehicles, to see how rapid the advancement is.
strider_mt2k
Posted 8:40 PM 21/7/08
@someToast: I wondered about that too, but figured it was simply a cultural thing.
strider_mt2k
someToast
Posted 8:29 PM 21/7/08
Plenty of skirts, though.
someToast
strider_mt2k
Posted 8:20 PM 21/7/08
There's no crying in Robot Soccer!
strider_mt2k
OMG! Ponies!
Posted 9:18 PM 21/7/08
Robot soccer?! Bah! Pish-posh!
In my day, we had Electric Football. It was loud, didn't work as advertised, didn't resemble real football one bit, pissed our parents off, but we liked it!
Robot soccer, indeed. Bah!
Don't come crying to me, sonny, when some upstart faux-hawked tin-plated David Beckham knocks your head off with a supercharged penalty kick that goes 2 miles down the lane, makes a U-ey, comes back, stops off at the 7-11 for a Cherry Cola Slurpee and then collides with the base of your neck at 400 miles an hour.
You'll wish you were watching crappy electric football.
OMG! Ponies!
jimrin
Posted 9:16 PM 21/7/08
I think the match was fixed... The other team didn't try all that hard.
jimrin
danson
Posted 9:13 PM 21/7/08
@strider_mt2k: I thought that the aprons are for providing a neutral and uniform color background... in order not to interfere with the machine vision.
danson
LoganSix
Posted 9:53 PM 21/7/08
@danson: I guess that would explain why both teams were black. Couldn't they just paint some jersey's on them just to give the feel that they were on two different teams?
LoganSix
Magnakai Haaskivi
Posted 10:16 PM 21/7/08
Chelsea's in contract negotiations with that striker; the only hang-up is the transfer fee.
Magnakai Haaskivi
Puck
Posted 10:11 PM 21/7/08
Yeah but do they fall to the ground and cry and grab their hamstring and fake other injuries like other soccer players? And then return to the game after being carried off in a stretcher 5 minutes later? HRM?
Puck
danson
Posted 10:25 PM 21/7/08
@LoganSix: Well, you could give each robots an RF transponder or a magnetic signature that you could detect when you get close. If you allow that, then you could paint the robot in whatever color you want. But I think the spirit of this contest is to do it by machine vision alone. Also, if you start identifying the robots by RF or magnets, then it's only a matter of time before you have to put an RF transponder inside the ball as well, since the machine vision will have hard time locating the yellow ball in the playing field full of yellow robots.
Of course, once you put the RF in a ball, then now you have an additional problem: the RF detector in the robot must now be a *directional* detector, in order to move toward the ball. Additionally, I don't know how accurately you can determine proximity to an RF source... surely not close enough to accurately determine where to kick. So, something like stereoscopic machine vision will have to be combined with RF direction finder to accurately locate the ball. Or use laser-sonar-lidar range finder. Before you know it, this becomes a contest of million dollar DARPA trucks kicking balls around.
So, let's just keep them all black.
danson
OMG! Ponies!
Posted 11:18 PM 21/7/08
@Puck: Are you talking about the 2006 robots built in Portugal or the 2008 robots from Germany?
OMG! Ponies!
godwhacker
Posted 12:31 AM 22/7/08
make 'em play aussie rules football for true robot carnage
godwhacker
Ideapimp
Posted 12:58 AM 22/7/08
Yeah yeah, robots playing soccer. What's with the weird skirts?
Ideapimp
xXxRHINOxXx
Posted 3:19 AM 22/7/08
Boring! *yawn* Call me when they invent robot football...like George Jetson got to watch.
xXxRHINOxXx
thor79
Posted 3:12 AM 22/7/08
Impressive? No not really.
What I saw was one robot kick the ball into a goal unopposed. How is that impressive. Didn't seem like any team cooperation. The right team didn't really do anything.
thor79
LoganSix
Posted 3:54 AM 22/7/08
@danson: They could just paint their heads different colors.
LoganSix
Chester_Copperpot
Posted 4:41 AM 22/7/08
Half-back passes to wing!!!! Back to center!!!! Back to wing!!!!!! Back to center!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Chester_Copperpot
karmaghost
Posted 5:43 AM 22/7/08
Also, fewer faked injuries.
karmaghost
Intro24
Posted 11:34 AM 22/7/08
Is it just me or is the goalie not that useful. At least that one didn't look like it even attempted to move.
Intro24
nutcracker
Posted 11:22 PM 21/7/08
This reminds me of a certain Eastern European soccer team.
nutcracker