Teams of robots footballers are gathered in Istanbul where the finals of this year's annual RoboCup competition take place on Sunday.

Now in its 14th year, the RoboCup was set up with the aim of creating, by 2050, a team of humanoid robots that can take on and beat the best human players.

This isn't just about football, it's also about addressing basic challenges in robotics - such as vision and co-ordination and in the case of the humanoid robots being able to walk and kick. There is also the problem of getting robots to co-operate as  team. All participating robots have to be autonomous although the machines can swap information wirelessly. Play must also be fair as no barging, blocking or touching is allowed.

 

 

Edinferno, a team from the University of Edinburgh, is one of 28 teams that has reached the final stages of the competition in the "standard platform" league where all the participating robots are the commercially available Nao model built by Aldeberan. In this video from BBC News Dr Subramanian Ramamoorthy, from the School of Informatics at Edinburgh University explains some of the finer points of training a robot soccer player and how this contributes to advances in artificial intelligence.

 

 

Visit the RoboCup 2011site for more information and to watch a live match or a video.

 

 

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