Issue #12
October 2003

By Dennis Merritt

AI - The art and science of making computers do interesting things that are not in their nature.

• RoboCup 2003
• AI and the Law
• Links

RoboCup News

The RoboCup-2003 competitions were held in Padua, Italy in July. There were a number of levels of competition, from simulation, with no real robots, up to humanoid. Humanoid robots just compete at penalty kicks and the like at this point.

Each year the rules of the competitions are upgraded to reflect the improved capabilities of the robot competitors, so I suspect the rules for humanoid robots will gradually evolve to the stated RoboCup goal of fielding a robotic team that can beat a human one.

The smaller robots are playing real soccer. The links below include some video clips that show them in action.

One of the smaller leagues is called the Small-Sized League. Its robots are coffee-can sized and play on a surface about the size of ping pong table, using an orange golf ball. The robots are autonomous but radio controlled from computers, and global vision is shared among them, provided by cameras mounted above the playing field.

This year Cornell's Big Red team won, defeating the University of Queensland Australia's RoboRoos by a score of 1-0 in overtime. Given that Cornell had won a few years previous with a score of 10-0 and then 7-6, before losing a year, it appears that defenses are getting much better.<>