Strong Showing by Veloso, et al. at RoboCup 2008
RoboCup 2008 in Suzhou, China, has just wrapped up, and once again Manuela Veloso and CMU have made a great showing.
In the small-size robot competition, our defending champion team (both 2006 and 2007), CMDragons, took 2nd place. Manuela reports that the final against PlasmaZ from Thailand was a fantastic game, played extremely well by both teams to a final score of 4-2. The team was led by Stefan Zickler (CMU CS PhD student), along with two gifted sophomores, Gabe Levi and Philip Wasserman. Interestingly, the robots used by CMDragons were designed and built by Mike Licitra three years ago. The fact that these robots have remained competitive for so long is a testament to Mike’s superb robot-design work (and, of course, great software and planning algorithms).
In the two-legged robot soccer category, CMU teamed up with Georgia Tech in the humanoid NAO league competition, forming team GTCMUnited’08. Here is a picture of the NAO robot, taken from the RoboCup web site:
GTCMUnited’08 took 2nd place out of a field of about 15 teams. In the final against the Numanoids team from the University of Newcastle in Australia, the game ended with a 0-0 score. To break the tie, penalty shots were used. Both teams scored, but Numanoids scored in a shorter time and was thus given the win.
A notable accomplishment of GTCMUnited was the remarkably short amount of time needed to develop the robots — just two months! Tucker Balch (GaTech) and Manuela Veloso (CMU) were the team advisors. Three members of the team traveled to China: Gaurav Gupta (MSc, GT), Misha Novitzky (MSc, GT), and Mike Phillips (junior, CMU). Other key members of the team included Sonia Chernova (CS PhD student), Brian Coltin (sophomore), Jinsu Liu (CMU visiting PhD student from USTC), Douglas Vail (CS, PhD 2008, and going to Google Pgh in a few days), and three other students from GaTech.
Finally, in the NAO humanoid robot simulation competition, CMRoboKids — developed by Jinsu Liu and Manuela Veloso — took first place! The final game ended with a 1-1 score at the end of regulation, but then in the penalty-kick phase CMRoboKids won 2-0.
While all of these competition results are great, what is most impressive is the tremendous growth of robot soccer all around the world. I’m sure that Manuela and the other pioneers could not have imagined how this competition would take off when all of this got started in the mid-1990’s. The international teams, in particular, have become extremely impressive, helping to push scientists and engineers everywhere to develop (and share!) new concepts and approaches in all areas of robotics research. These researchers have the dream to develop a robotic soccer team that can beat the best human team by the year 2050. Will they achieve their goal? While it may still seem far-fetched to some, watching today’s teams leaves one truly impressed with the sophistication and speed of play.
Congratulations to all of the participants, and especially to Manuela and her teams!
Peter Lee @ July 21, 2008
One additional note: Manuela Veloso is the President of the International RoboCup Federation. According to its web site at http://www.robocup.org/overview/241.html, the Federation is “an international organization, registered in Switzerland, to organize international effort to promote science and technology using soccer games by robots and software agents.”