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Competition with human champs is RoboCup's goal
Humanoid soccer
Photos by Joerg Sarbach Student Stefan Kohlbrecher programs his humnoid soccer robot named Bruno, at the Hanover industrial fair in Hanover, Germany, recently in preparation for th RoboCup German Open.'
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It's not as complicated as it looks, Stefan Kohlbrecher said of his team's robot. "We tell him that what is orange and round is the ball."
HANNOVER, Germany — They're not quite the automatons and androids of popular culture, but the small sporting robots on the field in Germany last month were no less entertaining.
Some move about on three wheels; others plod slowly and deliberately on two or four legs. They range from thumb-sized midgets to 2- or 3-foot-tall giants.
Their common aim? To win the annual RoboCup German Open at the Hanover Trade Fair by getting the ball into their opponents' goal.
And it's not as complicated as it looks, said Stefan Kohlbrecher, a member of the Technical University of Darmstadt's Darmstadt Dribblers team.
"It works with this camera; he can see with this regular Web cam," Kohlbrecher said of his team's charge. "He can look around, and when he sees the ball, these data are processed. We tell him that what is orange and round is the ball."
The contest is part of a wider effort to educate the public about how far robot technology has developed and how it is used in everyday life.
Some 850 robots in 49 teams were signed up alongside 350 university students and computer engineers from 14 countries. In the RoboCupJunior Competition for high school students, 116 teams from four countries faced off.
Robots competed in leagues that included small- and middle-sized, four-legged and humanoid teams.
Ultimately, the aim is to field a team of robots against people, Kohlbrecher said.
"The goal of the RoboCup is to compete against human world champions with robots by the year 2050," he said. "We're still a little far from it, but there is a lot of time to reach it."
On the Net:
http://www.robocup-german-open.de/en/
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