“Highlights” of our U.S. Open 2005 appearance. At that time the entire codebase was written by one student: Greydon Foil. As a bonus, some of the camera work here was done by Bowdoin alum and Google big shot Doug Vail who was at CMU at the time.
Sorry for the lack of updates recently; all of us have been hard at work preparing both the Aibos and Naos for competition in China. The Naos present extremely interesting possibilities for the future, not the least of which is their improved camera.
Here is a picture from the Aibo camera:
Here is a picture from the Nao camera:
Not only is the resolution much improved (640×480 pixels versus 208×168) but also the vantage point allows the Nao to see a lot more of the field at any given time than the Aibo ever could.
There is still a lot of work left to do before competition starts, but we’re ready for it.
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Just a heads up that if you’re in the area, and you’d like to watch our team scrimmage, we are holding a public scrimmage this Sunday in Maine Lounge in Moulton Union. We will be playing the Aibos on the larger field, 5 on 5, and also have a small demonstration of our new Humanoid robots.
Public scrimmages are a great way for us to get off of our scaled down field in the lab, and onto the regulation sized pitch. Also it will allow us to setup our Nao field for the first time.
Directions here:
View Larger Map
Today the Aibo technical comittee announced a portion of the updated rules for Robocup 2008. The size of the field will be increased by 25% in each dimension, to 5m by 7.5m. This represents an extra 50% of field area! To help take advantage of the new field size, teams will now consist of 5, instead of 4 robots per field. This will be a great opertunity to increase the high level soccer strategy of our team. Since the field is getting larger, the comittee has also hinted that the field lines will get wider to aid in line recognition. The official rules have yet to be published, so we’ll post the details then. The comittee has also called for qualification documents for entry to the Nao league. Presumably our paper will be mostly about why our success in the Aibo league will transfer to success in the Nao league.
Not sure how long the link will hold, but here it goes from the Wall Street Journal: In This Soccer Match, Players Are Robotic But That’s the Goal
It’s a pretty cool article about UPenn and UT Austin Villa and RoboCup’s forever entanglement with real soccer.
Sad day! The home of the OPEN-R SDK is gone as is the soon departure of the Aibo.
The rumors are true, from the Robocup Committee itself:
Dear 4-legged RoboCuppers,
I have just received an e-mail from Minoru Asada that Sony announced that
they will stop to produce AIBO by the end of this March. As long as they
have AIBOs, they will sell them. The services such as repairing and parts
exchanges will continue for about 7 years after they stopped the production.Sony decided to completely withdraw from robotics related activities.
In 2006, we will hold the Four-legged robot league competition as planned.
After that, we have to discuss what we will do (especially the TC).Best regards
Thomas Röfer
UPDATE:: More, From the Sony Aibo representative, to the Robocup 4legged League mailing list:
Dear all,
As Asada-san sent the email, Sony announced that Sony discontinues
production of AIBO.Since the beginning, AIBO has grown up with RoboCup. We very much appreciate
all of your understanding and support for AIBO and Sony’s activities. I know
the discussion about a platform in four-legged robot league and appreciate
the decision to use AIBO as the platform for RoboCup 2006. I appreciate to
it and I regret that Sony made this decision though it is your supports.Personally it is very sad to stop AIBO production, but as Kitano-san
mentioned
it is a new start for next evolution for RoboCup.I believe your success in RoboCup 2006!!
Thank you.—- Masahiro
Just further evidence over the power of Aibos in popular culture: House Episode Talks about Robocup [My Blog]
