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World Championships in Robot Soccer 74

Posted by Roblimo from the finally-a-sport-your-computer-can-love dept.
fACTOR writes "The Robot World Cup is an initiative to encourage research in artificial intelligence and robotics by applying the new technology to the world's most popular sport - soccer. If this idea takes off, maybe pro sports salaries will drop, and there will be a new kind of job created: "sports robot programmer."
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World Championships in Robot Soccer More

World Championships in Robot Soccer

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  • This isn't the same competition.

    The article posted on slashdot is about the RoboCup, this isn't that. But it's the same as the small-robot part of the RoboCup.

    ---
    It's all fun and games until someone gets hurt. Then it's just fun.
    ---
  • I am not really bitter, there are many things I like about the Eduni AI dept, and about the people in it. However if there is one thing that I have learned in discussions on SlashDot, it is not to understate your case (see new subject ;-).

    Further, I do not claim that some things that have come out of AI research have proved useful, linked lists, and expert systems are two good examples. But what do linked lists have to do with making something think?! While in the past there were some good ideas in AI (GAs, Neural Nets), these were done to death in the 70s and early 80s. There is nothing I am aware of now that is significantly in advance of what people were doing 25 years ago.

    WRT what I know about that joke project, my knowledge is gleaned from an hour long lecture given to us by the girl that did it, she also answered some questions that I put to her as a result of my disblief at how lacking in creativity the whole thing was (although I was more polite at the time!). I stand by my belief that NOTHING was learned about intelligence from that, and many other such projects, other than how not to achieve it.

    The definition of Artificial Intelligence you point to is cyclical. It defines itself in terms of "Intelligence" (see first line!). Any dictionary that used part of the phrase it was defining in the definition would be laughed at, I think this definition deserves the same treatment. Minskey's definition is the same. Show me a definition of AI that doesn't used words that themselves require just as much clarification as "Artificial Intelligence" does, and I will eat my hat (or would if I had one).

    I have no problem with young fields per se, I just have a problem with young fields that aren't even trying to grow up.

    I know that there are other undergraduate courses in Europe that cover AI, but how many of them are taught by an actual AI department?

    PS. Where did you do your MSC? Edinburgh?

    --

  • My views on the state of AI is not extrapolated from one project, that project was merely an example. My views were build up over 4 years studying in one of the worlds foremost AI research centers.

    --

  • Ok, so your are saying that despite the term "Intelligence" not having a proper definition, the term "Artificial Intelligence" does?! I never doubted which word, "Artificial" or "Intelligence" was posing the problem. It does not detract from the fact that AI still lacks any clear vision of how to achieve its goals, or even what its goals are. You complain that the definition of "intelligence" is constantly changing, however is this not one of the features of a poor definition? The fact remains that the field of "Artificial Intelligence" lacks a definition for Intelligence, so how can they claim to be making any sort of progress?

    --

  • Belief networks are basically computers applied to Bayesian probability theory... hardly groundbreaking new conecpts.

    Neural Nets and GAs may indeed find new uses all the time, but firstly, both fields have separated themselves from mainstream AI research. Neural nets basically perform pattern matching, in a manner largely unrelated to how our brains work, and GAs, while useful in some arenas, it is generally function-fitting stuff, they are not likely to pass the Turing test any time soon.

    --

  • So Artificial Intelligence is creating a program to pass the Turing test?
  • From your description, that was the AUVS (Assoc. for Unmanned Vehicle Systems) Aerial Robotics Competition from 1997 at Epcot, Orlando, FL.

    My college (UCF) took third place in '97, and hasn't done much since then. We still have the airframe and it flies, but the control electronics are ripped apart right now.

    Best start site for more info:

    http://avdil.gtri.gatech.edu/AUVS/IARCLaunchPoint. html

    Summary: The competition is much more challenging now. It's a truly hostile environment...

    Pictures and stuff from my uni are at:

    http://www.engr.ucf.edu/clubs/auvs/

    Rick 'email me w/ questions' Evans
  • Well, baseball is pretty boring anyway, but it is more than just one country, it's not our fault that no-one wants to join . . .

    later
  • Nope, but the Turing test is the closest approximation to a test for intelligence that we have. Unfortunately it is pretty cyclical in itself (something is intelligent if it seems to be intelligent).

    --

  • It's a more violent, primitive game, at least.
    /El Niño

  • The full page for the RoboCup competition [robocup.com] has lots of info, including results from last year's competition.

    And it looks like we'll be able to see 2d and 3d renderings of the simulator league, when the logs are available.

    ---
    It's all fun and games until someone gets hurt. Then it's just fun.
    ---

  • on one hand i agree that robo soccer is somewhat of a toy domain, and that work done on that problem may not scale up to real-life situations. but on the other, i think your extrapolation of the state of ai from that one project is a bit short-sighted.

    i can completely understand your frustration with the lego kits. when the robot's perception consists of only touch sensors, IRs, and maybe a sonar or two, it's going to hit a performance wall really early. the simple fact is, there's only so much you can do with such limited perception. in order to do anything of research quality, you will need much more than that - real-time vision and a ring of sonars, for example. not to mention you'll need to endow the robot with some reasoning about the environment, which is rather difficult with the C/assembly tools that are used for microcontroller programming.

    lego kits are fine as an introduction to robotics, and to disillusion people - that sensors are really noisy, that the environment rarely follows your assumptions about it, that you can't trust your perception, and that to duplicate even the most simple of human behaviors you need much more cognitive processing than basic systems provide. but robotics research, while facing more difficult problems, also doesn't work under the constraints of lego kits. consider the systems that are in operation right now, like museum tour-guide robots in bonn, the mars pathfinder project, and delivery bots at many hospitals and research facilities. it's a world of difference.
  • all right, let's start a holy war. :)

    first of all, artificial intelligence is not a theoretical field, but a science. unlike in theory fields (math, theory of cs), you can't just expect everything to be neat and clear and derivable from first principles. just remember how many centuries (millenia?) it took to come up with a reasonable model of the atom. we can't expect a reasonable model of the mind to just pop up overnight. for every brilliant insight there is a dozen detours. such is the way of science.

    and secondly, re your comment of ai being an ill-defined field - it's not the field that's ill-defined, it's the definition of intelligence that keeps changing on us! back in the 50s, when first ai systems were born, people actually considered intelligence to be equivalent to formal inference, spatial reasonoing, and so on. but as computers started getting good at those, the definition kept changing, as if to exclude what computers were doing - people started realizing: what about emotions, what about social skills, what about pragmatics? but this is a vicious epistemological circle - ai trying to model intelligence which is constantly being redefined because of ai's successes. to blame ai for this circle would be as foolish as blaming mathematics for people's fear of differential equations. the question should be how to break it.
  • This idea has been around for quite some time. Check out RoboCup [robocup.org] for details.

    What's really cool is that the Sony AIBOs were actually given their own league in this competition. They really can do more than just get up when they fall down.

    Carnegie Mellon University has been winning most of these competitions in the past few years - check out the team's project leader's web page here [cmu.edu].

  • hmmm, I'm in an oi band, I'm almost considering writing some hooligan songs and releasing them as mp3's.

    hmmm.

  • oops! (Score:1)

    by a.out ( 31606 )
    My bad! Who'd of thought that there were >1 Robot competition? :) I suck, overrated yes, troll no.
  • A US based high school robotics design competition already exists. The idea is to make engineering, math and science as popular as any physical sport. Students team with volunteer engineers from sponsor companies to build a robot designed for that years competition. National finals are held at Epcot Center in Orlando Florida. More info on the website USFirst.org [usfirst.org]
  • Now I really need to get those Legos. Esp the sports add-on package. Part of me always wanted to be a sports hero :)
    -cpd
  • Obviously one can't go to a soccer match without some appropriate songs; some (ole ole ole) might be appropriate for a computer, others (Lq46, you're a wanker, you're a wanker) less so. Perhaps a few new ones could be written. My suggestions:

    You're gonna get your fucking bolts unscrewed

    You'll never roll alone

    There's only 1 Kryten 523C, but he's got a 30-day guarantee and can be returned in the original packaging for a replacement

  • At last! My childhood hopes and dreams of some day being on a box of Wheaties! Hey... it could happen.

  • Benefits to AI research dubious at best (Score:3)

    by Sanity ( 1431 ) on Wednesday July 28, 1999 @04:53AM (#1779624) Homepage Journal
    During my degree in Artificial Intelligence we participated in a similar Lego based game, this time robot-rugby. We were given kits (not Mindstorms, but an in-house concoction) and told to build robots that played this game. During the course of the project my team and I became somewhat disillusioned with the whole thing, and while some came up with hopelessly elaborate software, we made our robot bumble about randomly, grasping the ball if detected. While we didn't win, we did come second in our section.

    In my opinion most current research in AI is non-creative rubbish. I am not unqualified to make such a statement given that I went through probably the only, and almost definitely the best respected undergraduate degree involving AI in Europe, and am an ex-president of the Edinburgh University AI Society. If there was one thing I learned from it is that most people doing AI research are either kids who just think it sounds cool, but don't have the intelligence or creativity to progress the field one little bit, or they would rather talk about AI than actually do anything about it.

    --

  • Here's an interesting article on two Canadian students taking on MIT and Sony just to name a few in this competition. (picture of robots included)

    http://www.ottawacitizen.co m/hightech/990726/2648889.html [ottawacitizen.com]
  • ok,m something fuckedup, this was suposed to go under a totaly different topic, dont know what happened, must be a glitch in the matrix
  • I mean, we've already made great advances in the field of robot boxing with Rockem Sockem Robots. We should finish that before going on to make robot soccer players, and the inevitable artificial riots.
  • Why do they even bother to do this competition any more? Everyone knows that CMU [cmu.edu] is just going to beat everyone again!

    -NooM
    • Shag Spice Girls?
    • Gorge themselves on kebabs?
    • Cry like little girls for getting yellow carded?
    • Drop like a felled tree and lie writhing on the deck whenever another robot looks at them in a nasty way?
    • Show enormous potential and skill before snorting half their salary up their noses and drinking the rest?

    I just don't think they could compete...

    Nick

  • Makes me think of the game One Must Fall, where there are fighting tournaments between different people's robots.
  • So what were your contributions to the field? You aim some harsh comments at those "kids" at university who are there to learn about AI and happen to be in the awful situation of not knowing everything yet.
  • bah! that's just a smokescreen because RMIT is gonna cream everone there!!
  • Belief networks
    those are new eh?

    ;)

    Neural nets and GAs are being put to new uses all the time too. still neat stuff. cheer up!
    All cutting edge research starts out stumbling around. Look how long it took before we had a clue about the planets! Thats why its fun!


    -Jack Mott
    Rice University PacMite GA Contender ;)
  • Yeah that would be very interessting to see....
    Guess Bill Gates will have something new to takeover then.
  • What's the use of intelligence in soccer anyway :))

  • There is no strategy in AF (merry-can football :-).

    There are simple tactics, which never really affect anything outside the game that they're played in.

    Also, there is far more, tactically, to football (soccer to merry-cans) than to AF. It's more subtle, but also more pervasive (I just WISH that our team would learn some...). Besides that, players need to be fit all round, rather than body builders that can run a little :-)

    That said, for a real game, with real rules, where players don't answer back to the umpire when a decision goes against them, you can't beat cricket.


    John
  • I remember watching a Scientific American Frontiers on Robotics a couple of years ago, in which various things were discussed (Cog was shown, as well as that other Brooks bot that has the funny looking face that can express suprise, etc).

    One of the things that was shown was a competition at some school for making a robot that could fly, pick up a disk out of a ring, transport it over a three foot wall, and put it in another area - all under autonomous control.

    One of the teams got really close - but couldn't release the ring (some High School entered a radio controlled blimp, that wasn't autonomous, that worked ok too), and so didn't complete the task.

    They said that they were going to compete the next year - and from what I understand - they had an idea on releasing the ring. What I want to know is, does anyone know if this feat has been done yet, and who won it?

    It sounds simple on the surface - but hard in practice from what I have seen...
  • When a robot can outplay Omar Vizquel at shortstop or Ken Griffey, Jr. in center field, then I'll be impressed. :^)
  • Have a new "World Cup of Women's Robotic Soccer"
    and hold it in Pasadena. Then at the end have the
    robot whose penalty kick shot ices the win whip off
    its jersey showing a jog-bra underneath.

    Yes, it's a joke. But how else will the winners
    get on the covers of Time, Newsweek et al.?
    #include "disclaim.h"
    "All the best people in life seem to like LINUX." - Steve Wozniak
    • Roll up in a ball the same size as the soccer ball and bump the real ball around. Do you suppose the opposing team might get a little confused? Might the opposing team acquire a few fouls for kicking opposing team members?
  • Robot soccer is already old. It's been around for several years (3 or 4 at least). My school always cleans up... we entered 3 out of 4 divisions last year and won all of them.

    http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~robosoccer/ [cmu.edu]

  • FIRST Robotics Competition (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    This reminds me a lot of a similar competion that I was in during high school. Check out the FIRST [usfirst.org] site for more info. It affected one friend of mine to the effect that she realized she was a geek and is going to major in EE starting this fall. :)

    I did not intend to be anonymous but I haven't been mailed my password yet. I am the Übermonkey [bigfoot.com]!
  • Firstly, I was a student, not a researcher. I am directing my "harsh comments" at those that claim to be contributing to the field through research, namely PHD students, and staff. Undergraduate students are there to learn about a field, not nescessarily to contribute towards it.

    To give an example of the stupid excuses for research that have taken place in the department, consider a PHD student who decided to do research into making computers tell jokes - a vaguely interesting idea I conceed. The end result of her PHD was a system that produced one very specific kind of joke, by looking up words with double meanings, and then slotting them into a template. 99% of the jokes that resulted were crap, the one percent that may actually pass for a joke ("Q:What kind of soap do gay men use? A:Fairy liquid") were just chance. Now this is 4 years work, for which she got to call herself a "doctor", and is actually one of the projects that the EdUni AI dept was proud of!

    As for what I personally have contributed to AI, not much. Why? Because the field is without foundation, even the term "Artificial Intelligence" lacks a proper definition! While I conceed that "Intelligence" is a difficult word to define, surely stating the nature of the field you are researching should be the first thing anyone does, before diving head first into research. In contrast, I have contributed to other fields, namely mathematics and computer science. Two grown up subjects.

    --

  • The world's most popular sport is, of course, football. It's just that Americans can't bring themselves to call it football because they already have a game by the same name that's played mostly with the hands. Go figure...

    Yeah, flamebait, I know, but then we are talking about a country that has a "world" series where only one nation competes :-)

  • Of course, I totally accept everything you say now, coming from a person that doesn't realize Canada isn't the 51st state. Toronto, Montreal (last time I was into baseball the Expos were there, I think), have baseball teams, duh.

    I know it's football, and it's soccer, and Americanisher Football, and they're all stupid.

    thanks for your time
  • Real fotball is alot bigger than the americans fotball... the american fotball really sux...its just a copy of the rugby who the englishmen did develope.
  • sorry for spelling football wrong!
    [8-)]
  • Sorry 'bout that. Wrong friggin story. What a morning.
  • It's really rather funny when you think about it. Fans of American football don't understand the intense and dynamic tactics used on a professional soccer field, so they assume it doesn't exist. Real sports tactics don't involve getting the team together for nearly a minute before _each_ and _every_ play and saying, "Duh, what do we do for the next five seconds?"
  • Yeah...i remember that episode...It was really cool..George did krash the robot before the competition so he had to go into the robot and act robot..and he won.
    But i sure would like a cyber dog...like follows you everywhere have got like some terrabytes of HD and you can plug it in everywhere, like if you are somewhere and whant to copy that coool movie..then you just plug your "dog" into the computer and copy the stuff...then ju just return home and receive the data..
    that would be soo cool.

    ///Harmagedon
  • Not quite sure if this is the contest I think it is, but I watched the championships one year at UCD, and saw the Linux box controlling Newton Labs' team make mulch of the runner-up, students from a Korean technical institute the name of which escapes me, and their DOS box. Granted the algorithm's more important than the OS, but after watching these robots for over an hour it was especially great to walk over and notice the targeting and scheduling displays running on an X desktop. Grizzled-looking guy sitting in front of it said it ran Linux. Whee. :)
  • Yay, cmu.
  • If France can win the world championship, it can't be much of a sport.

    ^. .^
    ( @ )
  • Who says?

    I think UQ Roboroos will beat the crap out of everyone else. We've got some secret weapons...
  • So Sony has it's own league just for it's robo-pups.. I find it curious that they would use it as pr that their dogs can play soccer on a team against other dogs. I mean.. do they want people to buy these so that they can train them to play soccer against the neighbor's real dog?

    Chances are, the real dog would just bite off the AIBO's tail or something like that.

    I know, I know.. it's off topic. But it's not WAYY off topic. =c)

    - "Hey, aren't you due back at the laboratory to get your BOLTS TIGHTENED??"

  • Cool....have you got a AIBO?

  • Mumble (Score:1)

    by mvw ( 2916 )
    I submitted that link last week (mumble)
  • No, it's soccer from his "point of view." It's all about perspective. Now if you wrote the post I would expect you to call it football.

    And if you think your soccer players are so much tougher than our football players then let's put them on the field together. Yeah, I know you will say something about them wearing pads and stuff. We require that so that guys don't die each game from all the hard hits. It's a way more strategic and tough game than soccer or rugby. I know, I've played a lineman.

    And re: the World Series. Have you heard of the two Canadian teams Montreal Expos and the Toronto Blue Jays. Have your country get their crap together and submit a team.

  • You seem remarkably bitter about the whole affair. There is some genuinely useful and interesting research coming out of Edinburgh (and out of AI departments elsewhere). AI projects can have real-world applications which affect 'grown-up' subjects such as computer science (see the work done in Edinburgh on programs such as CYNTHIA, for example).

    How much do you actually know about the machine humour research, by the way? Have you read the relevant theses (info available at this page [ed.ac.uk])? FWIW, 99% of the jokes the research was based on were crap, too. :)

    As for your claim that "Artificial intelligence lacks a proper definition", I am slightly confused by this. There are any number of good definitions of Artificial Intelligence. They may not all agree on the exact boundaries of the discipline, but nor do definitions of many accepted fields. A definition of AI as taught at Edinburgh can be found here [ed.ac.uk]. Minsky provides an often-quoted definition which takes a more practical approach: "the science of making machines do things that would require intelligence if done by men". Any good AI text book (and many bad ones) spend a chapter or so looking at definitions of the field.

    For what it's worth, if every field 'without foundation' were ignored, the grown-up subjects of which you are so proud wouldn't exist. What's wrong with working in a young field? That's where all the discoveries are still waiting to be made...

    I feel as qualified to comment as you, given that I went through the best respected MSc course involving AI in Europe (actually there are many other courses, particularly at the undergraduate level that cover AI). Evidently I got more out of my time at the department than you did.
  • I wish I could have attended, if only to see the Japanese teams break down in tears when they lost. With AI being as pervasive as it is in Japan (the "focus where you look" cameras, rice cookers with fuzzy logic), one would think they would have had a better showing.

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