It has been held every year for almost 30 years. But despite years of research, bipedal robots still lack precision and dexterity.
Published on 07/15/2024 1:19 pm
Reading time: 2 min
RoboCup Asia-Pacific tournament in Tianjin, China on May 20, 2023. (TONG YU/CNSPHOTO/VIA AFP)
So Euro football ended on Sunday with Spain’s victory against England in Berlin, the RoboCup starting Monday July 15 at Eindhoven in the Netherlands. It’s the Robot Soccer World Cup. This competition brings together universities and research laboratories from 45 different countries. It has been held every year since 1997 with the aim of creating a team of fully autonomous robots that could one day beat a human team that is world champion in football.
So far, Mbappé and Griezmann are not too worried. Rolling robots are already very advanced: they have a tactical sense, they move very quickly. On the other hand, bipedal robots move very slowly, are hesitant, clumsy and often fall. This competition is above all a reason to promote studies of artificial intelligence in robotics. It is easier to motivate students to create a robot that plays football, dribbles, scores goals rather than an industrial robot that makes screws and bolts.
Advances in artificial intelligence are a source of fantasy. In recent years, computers have beaten chess players, bridge players, poker players, and even the best drivers in car racing simulators. However, when it comes to physically moving around, it is much more complicated.
Although RoboCup has been around for 27 years, work on android robots began even longer. But researchers are still struggling to create machines with the same dexterity and versatility as humans. Picking up a pin that has already fallen to the ground is quite a challenge for a robot. Therefore it is not yet for tomorrow that a football player dribbles, the teams have set this objective for 2050. Perhaps lawyer robots or accounting robots will see the light of day earlier than football robots or other people who can perform tasks Make a family.
