Sweet and to the point for you this week folks. For those of you that haven't heard of it, the Robo Cup is a competition which attracts all the best university robotics programs from all over the world, hoping to produce the team of robots with one singular goal (no pun intended)... Playing soccer!!!
Ok maybe not the most noble of aims for the best minds in robotics to be pursuing. But good Lord these things are cute! Let me tell you folks, it's no secret that the Commodore has no taste for the real thing here. Watching human beings play soccer is one of my least favorite things to do, and even when i do watch it (World Cup. an occasional Premier League game) I'm just kind of bored with the whole thing. But these robots just make it so much more enjoyable. I vote for replacing the real players with these guys within the next five years. Watch the video and we'll discuss after the break.
Ridiculous isn't it? I know they're just tiny machines full of circuits, instructed only through programming. But my goodness how you feel for these guys. If any of you have seen any previous years of this competition you will know from watching this video just how much these bots (or more accurately their programming) has improved over the years. Think of all the actions, teamwork, and forethought required to play a game of soccer. Then think of how you would program this kind of thing into a bunch of tiny robots so they could play autonomously. As a programmer, I find this task immense and fascinating to say the least.
But one way or another, these robots entertain, even going to so far as to feign injury, thus better emulating the real thing. Speaking of which this is perhaps the greatest example of something I absolutely despise in real life that is wonderfully adorable and riveting to watch when performed by tiny robots with cute little heads. :) I thought you would all enjoy this. Now I'm back to watch a few more hours of this and dream of little professional wrestling robots that have personas of my favorite WWF wrestlers from the 80's. Sargent Slaughter Bot FTW!
Commodore128
I don't find it cute, but it's still very cool :). I love robotics though, and as a begginner programmer, I can see that as a major challenge.
Also, when I saw the title pf "Robots playing soccer...." I thought of this:
Awesome, just awesome
The robots are really funny! It makes me wonder if electronics will come with human-like characteristics like in the cheesy movies about the future.
I love the way they get back up after falling on their backs. It also creeped me out for some reason.
The whole thing was really cool.
Did you watch the "Disqualification" video?
The child size version was really neat.
Creepy? You've never seen this
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t_hOjEQNJbU&feature=related
I'm not kidding when I say at first I thought it was a kid in a suit.
This reminds me of this thing my dad did years ago. They used to build robots for there school, take them down to Florida and compete with them in various different events. I think one was a ring toss and another was ball collecting (Kinda like Basketball with multiple balls.). It was kinda cool if I remember correctly. Then after that we went to Disney world.