4-4-2 turns into 0101: Robocup in Brazil
More recently, one of the most exciting events in the international sports calendar was completed in Brazil. But none of the coaches was fired, and they didn’t have to water the grass, and, of course, nobody bit anyone.
This event was called Robocup , a tournament that sees the replacement of professional football players with robots. This is a regular tournament for national teams of experts in the field of programming and robotics, which shows how rapidly this area is developing.
Robots play in much smaller fields, and they themselves are much smaller than real players. Arena measuring 6 by 9 meters, which plays eleven 60 centimeter NAO robots .
Competitions take place at slower speeds. Robots slowly waddle and try to hit the ball. The ball itself does not rise in the air - as this can lead to serious malfunctions in the robot. Most likely this is due to the limited capabilities of these robots.
But from all this, the game does not get boring. The arena was filled with people, both children and adults, who applauded every time robotic players clashed in the arena in the fight for the ball. And you can rest assured that robots play correctly, they can attack and defend like real players.
On both sides of the gate people are sitting at laptops and monitoring the condition of robots. But they do not control them. They include robots when the match starts, but then the robots are completely autonomous.
Their autonomy is exactly what makes this football so unusual. They not only move around the field, but also make decisions on their own. Their choice is based on what they see - the position of the ball, teammates and opponents.
The appearance of these robots is very deceiving. Under their plastic skins hides the hard work of a team of programmers who work hard for many hours. The software for these robots cannot be found and downloaded anywhere; it is done from scratch. And since a potentially infinite number of strategies can be used in football, the task for programmers is very difficult.
In fact, all this robocub is a confrontation between programmer teams. They (programmers) in just a few minutes in real time should select the necessary strategy depending on the course of the match.
In the standard league finals, Australia played 5-1 against Germany, winning the championship.
As you know, Germany won the human World Cup, but Australia overthrew this country in RoboCup 2014.
As a result, we can say that this area of robotics and programming has great potential. If now we see slow and a little “dumb” robotic players, then after 10 years, perhaps the first Robonaldo will enter the field of Santiago Bernabeo and score a goal.
PS The 2018 Cyber Football World Cup will be held in Russia, in Tomsk, at the University of TUSUR .