[Sponsored by Boeing in 2005]
Robot soccer has become a major stimulant for AI and intelligent robotics research by providing a standard problem where wide range of technologies can be integrated and examined. Significant research outcomes are derived from these activities which at first sight may seem frivolous to some. Robotic competitions stimulate and validate robotic research, like the INEX competitions provide benchmarks for the data mining community. In our case, we are interested in real-time pattern recognition, reasoning, image processing, tracking, sensor-fusion and self-localization.
In the FIRA Mirosot league, a global vision system is used (camera on top of the playing field). The robots are controlled remotely by a PC (with no human intervention during the game). In the the FIRA Kheperasot league, the soccer games are played between two teams, each consisting of one robot player and up two human team members. The robot are fully autonomous with on board vision system. The human team members are only allowed to place their robot on the field, start their robot at the beginning of each round at the position indicated by the referee before each round, start their robot when indicated by the referee and remove the robot from the field at conclusion of the match.
We participate in the FIRA Kheperasot league competitions. In 2003, Narongdech Keeratipranon (a student from Thailand) worked on a six month project. Our robot Kheperoo won the 'Kheperasot world cup' in 2003 (Vienna, Austria). We had an entry again in the 2004 FIRA robot soccer world cup that was held at the end of October in Busan, Korea. We managed to defend our world title. A summary of the competition results can be found in the last FIRA newsletter . Narongdech had again outsmarted the other teams with a more versatile system (Narongdech is now working on a PhD on robot self-localization and mapping). In 2005 Narongdech was sponsored by Boeing, and went to Singapore to successfully defend his title.
http://fira.nus.edu.sg/results.htm
http://fira.nus.edu.sg/
http://www.fira.net/media/news/read.html?indexnum=79&page=1&keycode=&keyword=
Only the Danish team had before won a world cup back to back. 2005was a transition year for the Kheperasot league with the
introduction of 2D cameras. Up to this year competition, only 1D cameras (1x64
grey level pixels) were used on these coffee-mug sized robots.
In Singapore, we had our improved 1D-cam player 'Kheperoo' and our brand new
2D-cam player 'Jumbo' entered in the competition. 'Kheperoo' is the 2003
(Austria) and 2004 (Korea) world champion, but was defeated 4-1 by 'Jumbo' in
the final.
The 2005 trip to Singapore was fully funded by Boeing, and we are very
thankful to our sponsor.