RoboCup Kicks Off in Atlanta

Competition aims to create a team to beat human World Cup champions.

ByABC News
July 5, 2007, 6:26 PM

July 6, 2007 — -- Transformers may be filling the nation's movie theaters, but real-life robots from all over the world are convening in Atlanta to showcase their futuristic ability to help humans -- and to bend it like Beckham.

From Iran to Ireland, Germany to Greece, nearly 300 teams from 37 countries are participating at RoboCup 2007 at the Georgia Institute of Technology, competing in events from search-and-rescue operations to robotic soccer games. The ultimate goal of the RoboCup project is to develop a team of fully autonomous humanoid robots that will beat the human champion World Cup team by 2050.

"This is truly an international event," said Tucker Balch, an associate professor at the Georgia Tech College of Computing and general chairman of RoboCup 2007 Atlanta. "Each country, and even each university, has a different approach to [creating the winning soccer team]. When we all get together and see what works and what doesn't work, we all learn together and progress."

The competition features research robotics, meaning the more than 1,700 participants from universities, high schools, middle schools and elementary schools are showcasing new technology. Balch said soccer is the game of choice because it's one of the most international games and it's easy to recognize the robot's goal.

"Soccer is simple and everybody gets it," Balch said. "But soccer is also complicated because it involves one team against another team. There are lots of subtleties and many opportunities for creating better and better teams."

Real-time perception, artificial intelligence, multirobot collaboration and design principles of autonomous machines are just some of the technologies at work in a single game.

"It's driving many technologies forward all at once, even though on the surface it appears to he a simple game," Balch said.

RoboCup soccer features robots of all shapes and sizes, including teams of four-legged Sony AIBO robotic dogs and teen-size humanoids. Forget the remote control --