Soccer results of the Robocup 2010

The Robocup is the robot soccer competition most important of the world. The last was made in Singapore and end at the past June 25. Here you can see some videos, inform yourself about the competitions and know the last news.

According to their organizers by the year 2050, we will develop a team fully autonomous humanoid robots that can win against the human world soccer champion team.

Below you have a presentation video of the Robocup 2010:

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This competitions encourage to the investigation teams, to follow studying the phisics of the robots and the Artificial Intelligence.

Although for me personaly I find a lot of more interesting other competitions of the Robocup, as the rescue robots of people in difficult situations or the robots prepared to solve task of the house. But today I'm going to write about the soccer competitions. There are four categories:

Simulation league:

In this case, a software generates the soccer field and 2 teams of 11 players. Each team, program their players to answer to the information that recieve from the simulation software, as the position of the others players and the ball position. The artificial intelligence of these programs can beat easily to the most expert player of soccer games.

There are two simulators, one at 2D and the other at 3D. The winner of the 2D league was Japan and the winner of the 3D league was China.

Small size robot league:

These robots with wheels of 18 cm that play over a field of the size of a ping-pong table, using like soccer ball a golf ball. The position of the players it's get from a camera located at the ceil. This information goes first to a computer that will make use of some algorithms of artificial intelligence to send then by radio frequency to every robot what they have to do.

On the top of this robots there are some coluored stickers that allow to the software that use the camera, identify easily the robots and their position.

This competition is the most impressive one, because this robots with wheels are the most fast. This year win Thailand.

Below you have a video, it's not from this year, but it's a good example of that you can see at this competitions:

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Middle size robot league:

Are robots of 50 cm, playing on a field of 12x8 meters. The ball must be orange in order to make easy to the robots find it.

The robots at this case are totally independent. Its have sensors and cameras that allow carry the information of the play area to his processor, in order to indentify the others players, his own position at the field, the speed of the ball, etc. and make a decision in consequence.

China was the winner again.

Four legged robot league:

This league disappeared because made use the Aibo robots of Sony. This robots had the appearance of a dog and Sony ended its fabrication in 2006 because didn't give a lot of money.

Humanoid robot league:

At this modality additionally to the soccer match there are independent proves like pass, penalties, obstacle avoidance and others and it's divide in distinct categories depending on the size of the robots.

Two of te proves were won by Singapore, another by Japan, another by Australia and the rest, Germany, that usually is the leader at this type of league.

Both in this league as in the previous, the robots are quite slow and clumsy, because it's a lot of more easy move a robot with wheels that without them and it's even more easy if it have all the environment already processed, as in the league of small robots. In the following video you can appreciate it:

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