Posted by Stuart Grimshaw | Posted in tech | Posted on 22-08-2009
As debate rages around the globe about the potential for robot killing machines to run amok, feasting on the flesh of their vanquished foes there’s an even more dangerous development coming from boffins in workshops all around the world … soccer playing robots.
While they don’t quite come up to the standard of even the worst pub team, they’re still pretty awesome. Think about the PC or mobile phone you’re reading this on and then think what that was like 10 years ago … now fast forward these robots 10 years and what can you see?
The 2009 Robocup was held between June 29th and July 5th in Graz, Austria. The competition is split into several categories, such as Carlos Tevez, sorry I mean Small, Middle and Wayne Rooney, sorry, Humanoid. By far the most interesting category however is the Standard Platform League. The other competitions are for machines that are remote controlled but for the Standard Platform all teams are provided with the same hardware and they must concentrate on software to control the bots because they have no human master, it’s the descendants of these that our great-grandchildren might see endorsing the latest boot or opening their own fashion boutique on the high street.
You can watch a game from this years finals on Youtube, but don’t expect it to be any better than an and of season game between two teams fighting over mid-table mediocrity. You can totally see where this is going to go though, especially when you look at last years hardware and see that it was the old Sony Aibo robot dog, this year it’s the humanoid looking Aldebaran Nao, it wont be too many years I don’t think before the robots on display would run a trick or two past those pub team players.
