| RoboCup In Its 21st Year |
| Written by Lucy Black |
| Sunday, 06 August 2017 |
|
RoboCup 2017 took place last month in Nagoya, Japan 20 years after its beginnings there in 1997. A four-minute video gives an overview of how it has evolved and continues to be at the cutting edge for human/robot interaction.
In the video Gerhard Kraetzscmar one of the RoboCup Trustees says that RoboCup started with " a crazy idea". The idea of course is that by 2050, a team of humanoid robots that can take on and beat the best human players even though at the time it was inaugurated the first matches were played between wheeled robots alongside games of simulated soccer. Kraetzscmar says: that idea is really great because it instills a lot of long term interest. He explains how robot soccer expanded with the addition of humanoid leagues and was complemented with Rescue Robots competitions and those for robots @home and @work plus the Junior League for stimulating interest in STEM subjects, making it in all a "Really Great Movement." Itsuki Noda RoboCup President tells how the original RoboCup in Nagoya in 1997 became an annual event which has taken place around the world and trustee Manuela Velosos says of the 2016 event that it had 3,000 participants and 1,200 robots.
Another endorsements come from Eric Chown, who says of the Standard Platform that it is:
exciting see your research manifest itself in something fun
Referring to the @Home League, Sven Wachsmuth says that as robots become safer and more compliant the
walls between robots and humans are currently falling down
leading to greater opportunities for interaction and collaboration.
Stefan Kohlbrecher explains how the Rescue League propels the research community forward:
competitions bring out the motivation in people - they stay up forever to work (on their projects) and are fruitful for cooperation because everybody is in the same place.
A member of the UNSW team, taking part in the Standard Platform league conclude the click by saying how exciting it is to be at the cutting edge:
It's really hard to even get a robot to see a soccer ball let alone do things around the house - pick up rubbish etc. Being able to work on these problems and then see them applied in a situation that's going to be useful to someone - that's feeling's just fantastic - we're helping to beuild the future.
The video acted as a promo for the 2017 event and so features teams from last year's event in Leipzig. We've already reported the results of the Amazon Robotics Challenge that was part of the event in Nagoya
and now we can reveal this year's Soccer winners and runners, starting with the Standard Platform where all three winners on the podium were from Germany:
 Like last year, the winner was B-Human and this video, posted by third place Nao Devils, is of the second half of the Semi Final.
In the Humanoid League, the first prize for both the adult, teen-size competitions went to another German team.
 |
| Last Updated ( Sunday, 06 August 2017 ) |
