Tornado Alley (PROG)

[fuagf]

How we won the world robot soccer championship

August 6, 2015 2.25am EDT

Sean Harris
PhD student in robotics and artificial intelligence at UNSW Australia

My team from UNSW Australia defeated team B-Human from Germany 3-1 last week to claim back-to-back Robocup SPL World Championships. Here’s how we did it.

The competition involves fully autonomous robots, with no remote control, competing against each other in 5-on-5 soccer. Each team uses the same robots, so the competition is focused on software and artificial intelligence (AI) development, not on hardware construction.

The final was a nail-biting match locked at 1-1 with less than three minutes remaining. Both teams had strong strategies and well-tested code, but in the end, our speed proved too fast for the Germans to keep up with.

You can watch the entire match here.

[.. lolol .. YOU have to watch some of it .. first goal at about 8:30, think it was .. no, at 8:50! .. big plus, i'm sure none of the falls are dives .. ]

Late push

We went into half time with a 1-0 lead after dominating field position for most of the 10 minute half. Despite playing mainly in the German’s side of the field, we struggled to score many goals against their heavily defensive strategy. At one stage the Germans brought all five robots back to their goal box in an attempt to stop us from scoring.

The second half saw things briefly fall apart for us midway through. We had three robots lose power as a result of heavy falls and were suddenly reduced to only two active robots on the field. The Germans capitalised, and equalised with around three minutes remaining, leading to us calling a time out to revive our injured robots.

After our timeout though, our robots got things back on track. With five robots now on the field, we pulled the momentum of the game back in our favour and scored two late goals to secure our second title in as many years.

Dang the images don't copy, so inside .. https://theconversation.com/how-we-won-the-world-robot-soccer-championship-45156 .. for more.

Lol, no Messi's on that field, yet, in the future am betting there is an answer to inflated athlete's salaries here.