UK computer boffins are getting ready for their first entry into the Robot Football World Cup.

Eggheads at the University of Edinburg are at this moment in time, refining the three-strong team of robots ready for their participation in the tournament which will include entrants from 40 different countries.

But, if you think that programming computers to play football is a waste of everybody’s time then think again because according to one Dr. Subramanian Ramamoorthy, the difficulties in programming robots to play football will actually help in future projects where robots are designed to help humans in their day to day lives. Talking to the BBC, Ramamoorthy, who is an assistant professor at Edinburg Uni said…

“Football is a beautiful game and a difficult game. It’s a nice contained experimental testbed for trying out a lot of different things that are hard in robotics. The robot has to look, to move, to kick and all of these have to be done in the context of team work.”

In particular, Ramamoorthy highlighted the robot’s visual processing systems as being especially difficult to program for…

“Vision for robots is very difficult. They lack peripheral vision – something humans use extensively. We also have much better low light vision, if something changes in your environment you get a trigger.”

I don’t know why we are bothering, we’re only going to get knocked out by German robots…

Photo courtesy of newsimg.bbc.co.uk

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