Remember how RoboCup keeps saying that they’ll have a team of fully autonomous humanoids ready to take on Brazil Italy Spain (or whoever) by 2050? RoMeLa’s CHARLI could be the progenitor of those eventual champions, as it’ll be competing in the humanoid adult class at RoboCup 2011. Adult class means that CHARLI is more or less the size of a person; it’s 4 foot 7 which I think is slightly taller than Diego Maradona.

Also heading to RoboCup 2011 from RoMeLa is Team DARwIn and their (slightly smaller) autonomous humanoids:

Not bad, I’d say, and I especially liked those two what I’m going to assume were deliberate fake-outs at the end there. You had me fooled, you tricky little robot you!

[ RoboCup @ RoMeLa ]

Well, this isn’t a headline I get to write every day. Instead of using impoverished young children to jockey camel races, Dubai has been using impoverished young children-shaped robots with remote controlled whips. One thing the robots have going over the kids, though, is that they can be equipped with hidden stun guns to shock the camels into running faster, as if having a robot with a whip on your back wasn’t incentive enough:

Dubai police have confirmed they uncovered a gang of dealers who were selling electric stun gun kits, for up to £5,000, across the region.

These were then being fitted inside the robot jockeys, which cost between £130-£200, that in recent years have largely replaced child jockeys, traditionally used in camel racing, due to humanitarian concerns.

The electric shocks could be administered by remote control to encourage the camel to run faster.

Now, I know what you really want to see is a camel race with these robot jockeys in the saddle. I found a good one on YouTube; it’s a 6 kilometer track that the camels must make one single circuit of, and they can run at 50 kph. It’s ludicrous, and if you stick it out until the end there’s some closeups of the bots:

Man, what a crazy future we live in.

[ Telegraph ] VIA [ Gearfuse ]

Here in the US, we’re used to robot sumo happening at an, um, relaxing pace. Not so in Japan, as you can see in this vid. It’s from the 2010 All Japan Robot Sumo Finals, specifically the human-driven competition. Unsurprisingly, due to the pace of the match, the robots themselves are doing a lot of the thinking:

The secret is that they build a lot of autonomous functionality into the R/C robots as well. The operator can give the command to attack, but the actual engagement and high speed opponent tracking, is built into the robots.

This makes me wonder what the point is of having a human in the loop at all… It seems like the robots might be able to do a better job of reacting quickly and making decisions in such a confined environment. There’s also a separate category for fully autonomous robots, and here’s that final:

I’m not entirely sure what those big white panels are for, but if I had to guess, I’d say that they’re designed to fool the opponent’s sensors somehow, and if you watch the video closely, they may have worked.

There’s clearly a convergence taking place between the human controlled and autonomous sumo robots, so it’ll be interesting to see how the competition evolves. It’s possible that the two separate competitive categories will combine into one, but it’s hard to say whether the humans or the robots will have the edge, at least at first. While the robots are definitely able to react faster, they’re also restricted by their sensors, and they have less experience with deceptive tactics. But if nothing else, robots are fast learners, and it’s probably only a matter of time before they make humans completely redundant, at least when it comes to sumo.

[ Robot Sumo Finals ] VIA [ Robots Dreams ]

I was losing to my Apple IIe at chess back in the 80s, but somehow when the game is played with a fast and precise robot arm, it really drives home the fact that we humans are basically screwed when it comes to competing against computers at chess. A draw, which is what happened in this match between ‘Chess Terminator’ (seriously) and past world champion Vladimir Kramnik, is about the best as we can hope for.

One option, of course, is to just try and cheat, which Kramnik does at about 2:15… But this obviously just pisses the robot off, since it tries to rip his hand off a few seconds later. Oh well, at least we still have another few years worth of fleshy dominance at StarCraft, if we’re lucky.

VIA [ Gizmag ]

Artificial intelligence systems are good at tackling problems that can be solved using brute force, like chess… All the computer has to do is calculate out every possible permutation of moves and pick the best one. They’re also pretty good at games like poker, where even with incomplete information, a computer can make a move that is statistically ‘best.’ And lastly, they’re good at making decisions far more quickly than a human.

When you combine all of these separate characteristics into one game, things get exponentially more complex, but also much more like real life. And this is why people are trying to teach computers how to play StarCraft, at a level where they can compete with even the best human players.

UC Santa Cruz hosted the 2010 StarCraft AI Competition, which put AI programs through a series of different StarCraft testing scenarios to determine the most effective AI system at micromanagement, small scale combat, tech limited games, and of course full gameplay. The video above shows a bunch of highlights; especially notable is the absolutely brutal use of mutalisks by the eventual AI winner, UC Berkeley’s Overmind.

The last clip in the highlight video shows an AI taking on a world class human player, who wins handily. It’s only a matter of two or three years before humans have no chance against programs like these, however… And the reason (I think) is quite straightforward: the computer can micromanage every single unit it owns, on every part of the map, at the same time. A human can’t. Once the AI reaches a competent level of strategy and unit use (it’s not there yet), we’re screwed, because the AI can just launch multiple simultaneous micromanaged attacks.

There are lots more videos of the different AI programs competing against each other on YouTube here, and you can download in-game replays at the link below.

[ StarCraft AI Competition ] VIA [ New Scientist ]

The world’s most useless robot competition is back for another year, and it just leaves me wondering one thing: can it get any stupider?

Yeah, probably.

Check back in 2011 for the answer.

VIA [ Plastic Pals ]

Okay, so maybe this isn’t Humanoid Robots 101, but the rules are a little bit different when you work at Trossen Robotics and get paid in semi trucks full of exotic servos. At least, that’s what I imagine happens over there.

[ Trossen Robotics ]

It’s been a little while since we’ve posted a micromouse vid, so here’s a good one. It’s from a competition in Chubu, and the winner completes its final run in 5 seconds. Or maybe 4. Skip to 4:30 if you’re interested in the speed but not the exploration phase.

I can only assume that micromice are approaching some kind of asymptotic maximum speed when it comes to maze solving, but I’m optimistic that people will still keep on inventing ways of making them faster and more efficient… Vacuum power was one, and I’m sure there are more. It’s an interesting problem, though, because there has to be a compromise between speed and stability, which may involve slowing down, as this high speed video shows:

That robot is Tetra, who we’re already somewhat familiar with, but in this competition it took second place to the winner in the first vid, a micromouse called EggTorte.

[ RobolaboN @ YouTube ]

This is ChefBot. Or rather, this was ChefBot. ChefBot loses at making Creme Brulee, but wins at SparkFun’s Antimov Competition, where robots are required to perform a pointless task while destroying themselves in the process. I’m not sure how anyone could construe making a Creme Brulee as pointless, but as you can see, the robot does a pretty good job on the destruction part. And ChefBot didn’t even take first place… That honor went to this robot, who was just trying to cut a piece of cake for a teddy bear birthday party:

Poor robots. But I laughed anyway.

[ SparkFun ]

Feeling like you need a little extra metallic carnage in your life? Combots is back, bringing robot destruction to the San Francisco Bay Area. Flamethrowers, spinning titanium bars, carcinogenic fumes from friend batteries, and the salty tears of roboticists washing over a floor littered with the smoldering splinters of their creations. Yeah, it’s that good. Plus, there’s beer. Beer that’s on fire.

Combots takes place October 23rd and 24th from 2pm – 7pm at the San Mateo Event Center. And hey, guess what? We’ve even wrangled you a sexy 20% discount on tickets to the event. Just go here to buy them, and then enter this code: BotJunkie-m3L. If you don’t, I’ll be sacrificed to the winning heavyweight robot, and you wouldn’t want my blood on your hands, would you? Would you?

See you there!

[ Combots Cup V ]