RoboCup 2007 robotics competition set to go

Ladies and gentlemen, start your robots! The site of this year's installation of RoboCup -- the world's largest competition between new robotic technologies and applications -- will be at the Georgia Institute of Technology on July 3rd to 10th, 2007. On hard will be approximately 2,000 students and faculty from 20 nations participating. Other facets of the event include the Robotics: Science and Systems conference and an International Aerial Robotics Competition.

Among other highlights, RoboCup will feature the 'Nanogram League', a competition between microscopic robots. This specific competition challenges teams of students and researchers to construct microscopic robots -- ranging in size from tens of micrometers to hundreds of micrometers, and weighing in micrograms -- that will compete against each other in soccer-related drills.  The human 'coaches' will operate these tiny athletes by off-board electronics, and will guage feedback and performance via an optical microscope. The victorobot in this League will have demonstrated speed, agility and practical capability in managing objects in the bite(byte?)-sized environment. The Nanogram League will be primarily sponsored by KUKA Robotics Corporation, a leading global manufacturer of industrial robots.

The ultimate goal of the RoboCup project is, according to the organizers, "to develop a team of fully autonomous humanoid robots that can win against the human world champion team in soccer ... by the year 2050." Will the success of such machines as the chess-playing Deep Fritz be echoed by this new initiative? Will there be a 'Ro(bot)naldhino' in less than 50 years? Only time -- and circuitry and gears -- will tell.

Another facet of the RoboCup event is the RoboCupRescue project, which promotes technologies in search and rescue in large scale disaster situations. In the real and simulated RoboCupRescue leagues, robots explore a specially constructed disaster site about the size of a small house, which includes mannequins displaying distress signs, like waving hands and shouting. The goal is for the human-controlled robots to find the 'victims', and then provide enough information (map of site, location, etc., victims' status, etc.) to provide human rescuers what they need to perform a rescue safely, accurately, and quickly.

Also on the disaster theme is the Virtual Robots competition, which works on a larger site scale, for example, a city block-sized disaster area and in which teams of robots working together are deployed. Winners are chosen using similar criteria as the RoboCupRescue competition, only the simulated environment allows for additional hazards and challenges that would not be possible in a physical competition environment.

  
Other elements of the event include RoboCup @ Home, a league tested in a home environment, focuses the development of useful robotic applications that can assist humans in everyday life.  And RoboCupJunior, which fosters robotics advances from elementary and high school students, has more open ended rules in soccer, rescue, and dance challenges.

In tech- and sports-savvy countries such as Canada -- which boasts a highly computer-literate populace in cities like Toronto, and is no stranger to robotics since inventing the CanadArm for outer space almost 30 years ago -- RoboCup could find international acclaim and interest. And since Toronto now has the only Major Soccer League team outside the U.S., a showdown between man vs. robo-Pele could spur dreams of a geek-jock marriage continent-wide.

RoboCup info is listed here.