Tech hosts national RoboCup competition

While every other nation grows extremely anxious over the arrival of the 2006 World Cup, the United States waits with a more oblivious anticipation. Tech, however, took a step toward changing all that by inspiring some soccer fever in a way that only a technical school truly can.

On April 20-23, Tech hosted the 2006 KUKA RoboCup U.S. Open, a competition which offers all the excitement of soccer with the added bonus that every match is played by robots. The excitement did lack the widespread rioting and general hooliganism of the actual World Cup.

Internationally, the RoboCup consists of five different competitions, four of which are soccer-based and one in which the designers create search-and-rescue robots. Many of the robots are then used outside of the competition.

However, the U.S. Open included only three of the competitions: the rescue league; the small-sized soccer tournament, in which teams of robots with the dimensions of a roll of toilet paper compete on a field a little shorter than three meters on each side; and the legged robot soccer tournament, in which teams of four Sony AIBO robots (they look like muscular, robotic chihuahuas) play against each other.

Since the RoboCup held at Tech was in fact an Open, many international teams as well as teams from across the country competed.

Among the U.S. teams present were a joint team between Harvard and MIT, UPenn and Carnegie Mellon. The international roster boasted teams from Germany, Mexico and Canada.

Tech fielded two teams, both of which competed in the rescue league portion of the RoboCup. One of the teams was student-led while the other was headed by Tucker Balch, a Computer Science professor and chair of the entire RoboCup.

"Many of the robots, particularly those in the rescue league, are brought by teams simply doing research, evaluating mobility and the ability to effectively relay commands and information," Balch said.

For many teams the competition served as more of a practice trial for the upcoming international event rather than a decided contest for victory.

In the rescue league, the robots traverse a multiple-story, 300-square-meter arena modeled after collapsed buildings and all-purpose rubble.

Particularly applicable after Hurricane Katrina, the three arenas are designed to mimic real post-disaster situations.

The tasks get more difficult as the competition proceeds, but the basic task of the robots is the same: search for simulated victims (complete with heat, sound, motion, carbon dioxide and realistic human form) and build maps of the terrain to be relayed to rescuers.

For instance, one arena consisted of a field of different-sized pillars which the robot had to somehow get over in order to find the victim. It is similar to trying to drive a Honda Civic on the moon, if the Honda were a robot that could somehow manage to get through and over and around all the craters.

Essentially, the goal is to map the area, locate the victims, tell who they are, see if they are living, try not to kill them or upset anything around them, relay everything back home and do all of that with fewer people than anyone else. It's like training a St. Bernard on steroids, except the robots won't get sick if they are fed chocolate.

At the end of the rescue league, the German team came in first place and the team from Carnegie Mellon placed second. The team led by Balch came in third.

The student-led team from Tech did not place, but performed "very well," Balch said.

The next step for all of the teams is the annual international tournament, which will be held in Bremen, Germany, from June 14-20, right alongside the World Cup.

If the RoboCup founders have their way, however, the RoboCup may soon join the World Cup. The ultimate goal is "by the year 2050, [to] develop a team of fully autonomous humanoid robots that can win against the human world soccer champion team."

It's a lofty goal, to be sure, but one certainly attainable unless Brazil wins the World Cup again this year. If they get one more title under their belts, then it's pretty safe to say that not even the Terminator himself could defeat them.