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Little Robots Play Soccer

Posted by michael on Sat Apr 03, 2004 02:33 PM
from the look-out-pele dept.
Robotics
qengho writes "Vstone's programmable and automonous humanoid robot Robovie-M can play soccer, throw a ball both over- and underhand, and even demonstrate shame (over a missed shot, presumably). Lots of QuickTime movies of the bot in action."
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  • Where are the (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 03 2004, @02:34PM (#8757160)
    Hot robot soccer moms?

  • Sigh. (Score:5, Flamebait)

    by conner_bw (120497) on Saturday April 03 2004, @02:34PM (#8757161) Homepage Journal
    Dear north america,

    it's called football.

    Sincerely,

    The rest of the world.

    • OK, but what about the hooligans ? (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      are they called "soccer hooligans" or "football hooligans" ?
    • If you look up the history of Soccer and American Football, you will find that American Football came first. What we refer to as football has the right to the name first. Calling soccer football is stealing the name. American Football was called football before Soccer existed. Though it's only by a few years.
    • Actually...
      NFL Chronology 1869-1910 [nfl.com]
      Wanders off whistling, hands in pockets

      • Re:Sigh. (Score:5, Informative)

        by nickos (91443) on Saturday April 03 2004, @06:23PM (#8758498)
        which says:

        1869
        Rutgers and Princeton played a college soccer football game, the first ever, November 6. The game used modified London Football Association rules. During the next seven years, rugby gained favor with the major eastern schools over soccer, and modern football began to develop from rugby.

        1876
        At the Massasoit convention, the first rules for American football were written. Walter Camp, who would become known as the father of American football, first became involved with the game.

        So, American Football (Gridiron) is based on Rugby, which is a sibling of Football (the game where you kick the ball all the time).
      • You know, you're right... because people are always kicking a ball in american FOOTball. I'm sorry, but how is calling a sport where the foot rarely touches the ball football 'less-confusing'?
      • How is this relevant? Does every sport have to be fully described by its name now?

        I dont see a lot of insects in a game of cricket, yet somehow people still understand what it means.

        Yeesh.

  • But how autonomous? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by pholower (739868) <longwoodtrailNO@SPAMyahoo.com> on Saturday April 03 2004, @02:34PM (#8757164) Homepage Journal
    This little guy is impressive. I couldn't get a lot of information from the website, but it looks to be controlled by computer. But, how autonomous is it? Im sure it won't look as good as the programmable, but I would like to see if it can do all of these things as an autonomous robot. As long as the slashdot effect isn't immediate, you should view the videos of the robot picking up the ball and throwing it overhanded, also, the one of him doing a handstand is incredible. Why can't asimo [honda.com] do all of this yet?
    • The little guy sure is impressive.

      Anyone else think it looked like a mini-me version of Giant Robot?

      Especially given all those strange arm movements and waving to the crowd, et al.
    • i agree completely. i was AMAZED at how flexable it was and how aware it appeared to be of its own balance and physics in general. do you think its completely remote controlled? i would image it would need one very complex control or two operators.

      I can imagine the toy company new product people wetting their pants over this little guy.

  • Hmm (Score:4, Insightful)

    by James A. M. Joyce (764379) on Saturday April 03 2004, @02:37PM (#8757182) Journal
    "even demonstrate shame"

    There's a big difference between demonstrating shame and feeling shame. It's a pretty paltry feature compared to the ability to automate its motions so well. I wonder how well it'll do in the RoboCup?
    • I remain convinced the robots are pretending to be ashamed of what they have done so that the other ones can slaughter every unwitting human in the stands.

      "Awww, look! He's sad because he... MY FLESH!!"

  • Carnegie Mellon AIBOs pwn this (Score:5, Informative)

    by ElGnomo (612336) on Saturday April 03 2004, @02:39PM (#8757195)
    Im actually a student at Carnegie mellon University where we have our own teams of robotic soccer players, ranging from cute little Sony Aibos dogs that pwn in international Aibo dog soccer competitions ( not kidding! )to an up and comming segway team!
    check it out here [cmu.edu]

  • What about this? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by thedillybar (677116) on Saturday April 03 2004, @02:40PM (#8757203)
    That looks pretty cool. But does it even compare to this robot [r50rd.co.uk]?

  • Patented moves (Score:5, Funny)

    by SuperBanana (662181) on Saturday April 03 2004, @02:47PM (#8757241)
    even demonstrate shame (over a missed shot, presumably)

    Yes, but does it rip off its shirt after a cup-winning goal shot? Everyone knows that the crowd likes it when the players hamm it up.

    (ducks, runs for cover)

  • and may even win the game... (Score:3, Funny)

    by mantera (685223) on Saturday April 03 2004, @02:47PM (#8757242)

    With looks like that, they're sure to intimidate anyone who stands in their way.

  • I'm impressed by this (Score:4, Insightful)

    by SimianOverlord (727643) on Saturday April 03 2004, @02:53PM (#8757280) Homepage Journal

    This little guy shows that as far as the goal of a fully working robotic (human-avatar) intelligence, mechanistically we're there. We can create an avatar which is robust enough to do the full human movements. Now we just need to improve the AI side of things. Let's face it, AI is severly lacking at the moment. I wouldn't say I'm an expert by any means, but I do try to keep up with the relevant research in the field.

    Most experts agree the real test of artificial intelligence is, of course, found in game theory, with chess programs in particular gaining a lot of attention and publicity because of their year on year increase in performance thanks to better and better AI. But these certainly aren't quite up to scratch - a good example is a game I played just 10 minutes ago against the computer at so-called "Intermediate II" level.

    I find most computer chess programs good at opening moves, because most have built in opening move databases (which I regard as cheating). I played the two knights defense as always, leading with 1....d4. The computer answered with its own two knights defense which is particularly annoying and insipid. That's one mark down for AI, mimicking human behaviour.

    The trouble is chess AI is reactive rather than proactive and so whereas I was working to take down the right flank of the computers defence using a Queen bishop rook combo, it was just skirmishing around the centre to take a few pawns off me. Very poor AI.

    Frankly, it's stategic thinking that the computer can't match us at, which was clear by move 27, where my move 27...KnC3-E4 forked a queen and rook. That sort of manouvering is quite obvious to the human intellect, and the advantage in points meant I went on to win the game quite comfortably again, with a rook v bishop endgame and quick checkmate.

    Really all this just goes to illustrate that AI has a long way to go...I wouldn't say I was much more than a very good chess player.
    • This little guy shows that as far as the goal of a fully working robotic (human-avatar) intelligence, mechanistically we're there. We can create an avatar which is robust enough to do the full human movements. Now we just need to improve the AI side of things. Let's face it, AI is severly lacking at the moment. I wouldn't say I'm an expert by any means, but I do try to keep up with the relevant research in the field.

      Ruh-eally. Did you watch the movies?

      The robots had the dexterity and balance of, at best,

      • Re:I'm impressed by this (Score:4, Funny)

        by Jeremi (14640) on Saturday April 03 2004, @06:04PM (#8758418) Homepage
        The robots had the dexterity and balance of, at best, a 3 year old human


        Can your three-year-old do this [vstone.co.jp]?

      • The problem is that, from what I can tell, all this robot does is play back previously recorded motions. The way these motions were derived was through a (probably rather long-winded and painstaking) process of trial and error. It probably went like: move foot forward 1mm - robot topples - repeat, now move foot 1mm to the right first ... you can see this has nothing to do with intelligence. This is how asimo works as well, btw.

        This robot can't react to it's environment. It has no sensors. If the environm

      • The over hand throw video was telling, as it took the robot several separate motions to position itself and wobbled about as much as is possible without falling over upon throwing the ball. The ball was thrown with no accuracy.

        Plus, it throws like a girl.

    • Re:I'm impressed by this (Score:4, Insightful)

      by RichardX (457979) on Saturday April 03 2004, @05:30PM (#8758223) Homepage
      No offence, but unless you happen to be Kasparov, I'd suggest you should look for a better chess program before denoucing AI systems in general as being poor at chess.

      Chess is a game very well suited to computers, and thus one that AI systems have rapidly become good at. If you want to see something AI really struggles with, take a look at the game of Go - as yet noone's come close to creating a Deep Blue of Go, as it's far more abstract and 'human' in it's mechanics than chess.

  • Shame (Score:4, Funny)

    by MouseR (3264) on Saturday April 03 2004, @02:55PM (#8757293) Homepage
    I bet their servers are expressing shame right now.

  • OS? (Score:3, Funny)

    by bigbaloney (767817) on Saturday April 03 2004, @02:57PM (#8757308)
    Assuming it runs...

    - *BSD, it will be unexiting, but the best keeper the world has ever seen.

    - Windows, it will be great, because games is the one area where Windows is better than everything else.

    - MacOSX, it will look really good and get married to a Spice Girl. (I sure hope this does not mean David Beckham is dying.)

    - Linux, you do not want to go near its fanatical followers. ;-)

  • Shame (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 03 2004, @03:00PM (#8757324)
    and even demonstrate shame (over a missed shot, presumably)

    No. It's because nobody has bothered to give it any pants.

  • Shame? (Score:3, Funny)

    by cpritchett (210923) <cpritchett42.gmail@com> on Saturday April 03 2004, @03:10PM (#8757362)

    Is there an overzealous parent robot in the crowd yelling obscenities at the coach and screaming "Daddy didn't raise a loser!"

  • Obligitory mirror (Score:3, Informative)

    by Qwell (684661) on Saturday April 03 2004, @03:12PM (#8757373)
    This should work...try not to kill this one too.
    http://outboxes.com/www.vstone.co.jp/e/rt01e.htm [outboxes.com]
  • Do they make a tanto that strong?
  • Also can it snort mucas from one nostril, tell the newspapers about its gambling problem, be photographed with hookers? How's its gang rape programming?

    These questions must be answered before we can evaluate whether this is truly a robotic footballer.

  • Top-level Functions (Score:4, Funny)

    by t_allardyce (48447) on Saturday April 03 2004, @04:02PM (#8757701) Journal
    Initialise:
    -Take money
    -Find ball
    -Take money
    -Move towards goal
    -Take money

    Game end:
    -Return to changing rooms
    -Overclock servos
    -Refuse overclocking test
    -Disqualified
    -Take vacation
    -Take money
    -Have baby: name=[city|band|corporate product]

    General:
    -Take money
    -Take knight-hood

    Error Handling:
    -Avoid tabloid photographers
    -Avoid mid-season injuries

    Additional: if (popularity > 10)
    -Reality TV spin-off
    -Reality TV spin-off
    -Cameo
    -Release single
  • Does anyone else get that feeling that the US and Europe are about to play catch-up again? Right now we're at the technological level of atonomous vacuums, and japan is training their ambidextrous robotic armies on soccer. How long before Japan makes one that's 3 feet tall, terribly cute, and can wash the dishes (with a stepstool)? While our educational institutions are doing research with an eye for immediate military applications, Japan has been doing pure research for the past twenty years, and it is

  • We need one. Or eleven. (Score:3, Funny)

    by Sly Mongoose (15286) on Saturday April 03 2004, @07:01PM (#8758670) Homepage
    The West Indies need some of these robots, providing they can be taught to play cricket. In fact, we would benefit from them even if they can't be taught to play cricket! As it stands, my dog [anjo.com] would make a grand addition to the team, because he can catch the ball. OK, he can't bat worth shit, but neither can any of the current team members...

    • We've had simulated sports for years - EA's FIFA series let you simulate entire world cup tournaments. Yes, it may seem like an attractive proposition - the cost would be less since there are no arrogant prima donnas demanding millions. However, until you can give the robots the flair and personality of human athletes, it just won't catch on.
      • Hell, I can simulate player personalities right here.

        Commentator: "What's your strategy going into the second half?"

        Robo-player: "Well, we just weren't scoring enough points was the problem. We're gonna try to play hard and score some more goals than we did in the first half."

        Commentator: "All right."

        I don't think the soccer-playing robot would have too much trouble doing a retarded dance in the end zone, so I think we're set.

        The real challenge will be to teach robots to make terrible jokes and use th

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