Once the domain of government and university labs, artificial intelligence research is turning into a rough-and-tumble street sport. At least it will be this August, when the world's leading researchers gather in Nagoya, Japan, for the first World Robot Soccer Cup.
Creating a soccer-playing robot is a formidable challenge. A good bot has to have a grip on vision, learning, path planning, motor control, multiagent collaboration, strategy definition and recognition, real-time reasoning, and sensor fusion - all classic AI problems. Teams from eight countries - including squads from Carnegie Mellon University and Tokyo University - have signed up already. You can find the rules at www.robocup.org/RoboCup/RoboCup.html.
- Fred Hapgood
ELECTRIC WORD
Robo Soccer
