Communications of the ACM
How Football Playing Robots Have the Future of AI at Their Feet
International robot soccer competitions have become a popular way for motivating innovations in robotics.
Credit: Institute for Software Technology
Research published in WIREs Cognitive Science details how robots designed to play football (called "soccer" in the U.S.) are propelling the development of robotic artificial intelligence that can be used for advanced applications. "Football is a useful task for scientists developing robotic artificial intelligence because it requires the robot to perceive its environment, to use its sensors to build a model of that environment and then use that data to reason and take appropriate actions," says Claude Sammut, a scientist at the ARC Center of Excellence for Autonomous Systems. "On a football pitch that environment is rapidly changing and unpredictable, requiring a robot to swiftly perceive, reason, act, and interact accordingly."
The sport also requires communication and collaboration between robotic players as well as learning capability as teams adapt their strategies to better challenge opponents.
Competitions between robots are not restricted to football—there also are contests for urban search and rescue and residential robotic assistants. Search and rescue presents robotics developers with a new set of problems to overcome because such environments are highly disorganized, unlike a football pitch layout.
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