NO GUTS, ALL GLORY AT ROBOT SOCCER WORLD CUP
Spectacular falls, miraculous goals, and footwork
that would put the Premier League to shame — RoboCup 2014 has seen it all. But unlike that other
Brazilian soccer tournament that’s been in the headlines, these games have been played entirely
by robots, reports CNET. Billed as the biggest robotics event in the world, RoboCup was originally launched with the goal of developing a team of robots to beat humans in the 2050 FIFA World Cup. Now in its eighth year, RoboCup 2014 has brought together the brightest engineers and computer scientists from around the globe for a week of robot action in João Pessoa, Brazil. While there
are competitions for robot dancing and urban search and rescue, this year an Australian team has taken out top honours in the flagship soccer event, beating Germany’s HTWK Leipzig University in a tense ( and, let’s not lie, occasionally ridiculous)
grand final match. Team rUNSWift from the University of New South Wales in Sydney took out the prize, leading a team of totally autonomous robots ( without remote controls) in a game that essentially follows the same rules of soccer — two halves, goalkeepers and fouls for players. The team,
made up of students and staff from UNSW’s Computer Science and Engineering School, have
been working on the robots for years.