Robots on Linux - the prospect of "robosocker"?

    For the second week, Latin America has been worried about “its own” at the next American Football Cup in Venezuela. At the same time, research teams from all over the world are sent to the North American continent, to Atlanta, to present their latest developments in the field of robotics at another football championship - the Robocup Cup . The main trend of Robocup 2007 is the replacement of the well-served Sony AIBO platform with Linux-based development.


    Yes, Sony AIBO is not only a robot dog. AIBO stands for artificial intelligence bot (robot with artificial intelligence) and is a platform for creating robots. The scientific teams participating in the Robot Cup traditionally develop their robot players on this platform. But this year, more and more teams give preference to development based on an open API. This state of affairs was most likely influenced by a statement by Sony (made back in 2006) that the company was stopping the improvement of both AIBO and its "humanoid" version, QRIO . As a result, in 2007 at least two companies applied for the replacement of AIBO.

    According to the organizers of the Robot Cup, for more than 10 years of the tournament (this year it is 11th in a row), “robofootball” has evolved significantly. Robot players began to move faster, they are much better oriented on the field in search of the ball, or rather they hit the ball and even show the beginnings of a team game. In many respects, this is a merit not only of developers, but also of AIBO platform. But in order not to stand still (goodbye, AIBO), sports scientists are looking for new approaches. And, according to the developers, Linux-based systems fully meet their needs.

    One of the new models - Nao - was developed by Aldebaranduring two years. This is a humanoid robot running one of the varieties of the Linux operating system. In addition, the software of the open project URBI (Universal Real-time Behavior Interface - a universal real-time behavior interface) was chosen as the software for Nao . Although Linux robots are still far from perfect. I remember that in the racing competitions among robots in 2006, the Tommy robot running under Linux OSliterally "killed himself against the wall." It is unclear where he "caught a glitch", but after a collision at a speed of 70 km / h with a guard, Tommy did not survive. Nao developers claim that even though their robot learned to play football in France, he won’t kick anyone in the stomach (hi, Zidane!). I want to believe ...

    Aldebaran will put on the field also a smaller, new second-generation Nao model, which is an analogue of the famous AIBO dog.

    The robot weighs 2.5 kilograms (more than AIBO) is equipped with stereo-visors and various sensors, and runs on an AMD Geode LX800 processor with a clock frequency of 500 MHz (like the human-shaped Nao). Developers from Aldebaran promise that after the competition they will provide publicly available all the information about the creation of Nao.

    viaPC Magazine / RE , LinuxDevices

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