UM Going to the RoboCup 2010
June 16, 2010 — Coral Gables — The 14th annual RoboCup World Championship and Symposium is an international robotic competition, whose goal is to advance Artificial Intelligence (AI) and intelligent robotics research by using an exciting scenario: soccer games where competitors explore, combine and test a variety of cutting-edge technologies. RoboCup 2010 will be held in Singapore June 19-25. The University of Miami team the 'RoboCanes' is one of only two US teams participating in the 3D simulation soccer league. 'The idea of using soccer as a test bed for robots is to learn about the needs of agents, or robots, that act in real-time, dynamic, and adversarial environments,' says Ubbo Visser, research associate professor of computer science at UM College of Arts and Sciences and team leader for RoboCanes. ?To understand what it takes for a robot to integrate knowledge and put information into context so that it can make decisions in a split second; that is one of the hardest problems in AI and robotics to solve right now. RoboCup (originally called The Robot World Cup Soccer Games and Conferences) started in 1997, and over the years has become the prevalent robotics competition in the world, involving more than 3,000 researchers, about 450 teams and participants from over 40 countries, which makes this event a real world championship. For the event, the contestants develop autonomous robots and software agents and take part in games, simulations, conferences, and educational programs, but RoboCup is not just about playing games, explains Visser, who is one of the Trustees of the RoboCup Federation. 'There is a noble goal behind this work, namely to understand what's going on if we send robots in the field and let them do the work of humans,?
