Am I the only one...
Why give it arms at all (other than goal keepers). doesn't need them for play. It must be quite a bit of programming to keep them out of the way. And if they are there for stabilization, a few gyros should do a better job.
A top Australian computing boffin, analysing the state of play in today's RoboCup droid football leagues, says that robotic footballers will be able to beat the best human players in the world by 2050. The Aldebaran Nao robot. Credit: Aldebaran Rumours of unsavoury off-pitch antics with pleasure units are completely …
It would make it interesting.
At the moment it's the same year in year out - rarely will someone develop a new technique or there be any sort of anything revolutionary.
Robots would make it more like formula1 where constant innovation ensures that it's kept interesting year after year (except when they have to change the rules when 1 team wins all the time!)
So considering that it took another 30 years on from the original statement for chess computers to start beating humans regularly, we are realistically looking at 2080 until this becomes reality?
I can see the point of chess computers in terms of progression of programming strategy etc, but I really can't see the point of football playing robots. I'm not saying it won't happen, I just think it highly unlikely - and somewhat pointless.
Surely a robot surgeon would be a better investment of someones time, or robot clearance divers, or even soldiers. But footballers? WTF?
"So considering that it took another 30 years on from the original statement for chess computers to start beating humans regularly, we are realistically looking at 2080 until this becomes reality?"
The bet was 10 years, it took 30 - three times longer than predicted.
So if "in the same spirit" they're predicting the Soccerbots will be beating us in 70 years' time - keep your eyes peeled during World Cup 2222 (where RoboBaddiel/RoboSkinner will be re-releasing their catchy "256 years of hurt" song)
...God bless YouTube!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uIuRc1r_N34
It must only be a matter of time before they can pull the AI programming out of the Brazil / Real Madrid / Scunthorpe team from PS3 FIFA, stick it in one of these things, and hey presto, a little robotic Messi!
I for one welcome our new dancing and soon-to-be-football-World-Cup-winning robotic overlords
I wondered about arms/fingers but there are also throw-ins...
Will these machines obey Azimov's 3 prime directives? I imagine an aggressive robot player might be intimidating and prevent tackling ? The flip side is, if they forbear the risk of causing injury their tackling would be inadequate...
Look back on the 60s and 70s, when chess grand masters like Boris Spassky and Bobby Fischer were international celebrities. How many chess grand masters do you see in the news these days? I would say that this is directly linked to people knowing that the best grand masters would be hard pressed by their AI opponents. And nobody is really lining up to see whatever iteration of Deep Blue that is cooked up by IBM take on all comers at chess.
So I guess our future is that we build robots that can play soccer, but in doing so we destory international football as a professional sport? Do people really want to pay to watch machines play soccer with other machines?
Sounds like a waste of programming time there. Surely, even a game as simple as soccer requires a mountain of programming so that the droids don't just go charging into eachother or run through the goal net or sit there motionless when the ball is kicked out of bounds.
I'm glad I won't live to see it--but then perhaps my brain will be downloaded into an android body and I will see it!!
Mines the one with the EMP-hardened, rust-proof shell....
"I would say that this is directly linked to people knowing that the best grand masters would be hard pressed by their AI opponents."
Really? I'd say it's more to do with the fact that the cold war's over (and Afghanistan is generally speaking crap at chess. Also, the Taliban banned it.) With the subsidiary factor that none of today's grandmasters are as wonderfully insane as Bobby Fischer.
There's popular sports that a robot could already do better than a person; I imagine someone could cobble together a robot golfer in a year or so that would shoot 30 under par on any course you care to name (all it needs is a course map, rangefinder and a wind sensor, some utterly basic logic, and the swing mechanics from any club/ball testing robot, and Bob's your uncle. Yes, it'd be harder to design one that could play really creative shots, but it wouldn't *need* to, as it'd be in the middle of the fairway after a 360 yard drive on every hole.) Doesn't mean no-one cares about the Ryder Cup. (Insert joke about only dull middle-aged white men caring about the Ryder Cup here, if you must.)
Chess is easy for computers. There are only a few possible moves per turn; with proper optimizations and enough brute force, you can just explore the most likely parts of the state space and pick the best choice. That approach is unfeasible for games with an exponentially larger move set than chess (e.g. Go), and it just plain doesn't work for the physical world.
The prediction might come true, but if it does, the merit will go more to mechanical engineers than to computer scientists.
...not with professional players, anyway. For a start, a 'Human Race XI' doesn't exist as yet and as such there's no reason for clubs to release their players for such a match. The main reason why they wouldn't release them though (as they do for testimonials, charity games etc) is the risk of injury.
A robot player will be able to tackle without fear of getting hurt itself. It would take quite a whack from a human opponent to render the machine 'injured' but would be able to dish out Lee Cattermole and Wes Brown style tackles time after time.
Also, throw-ins would turn into massively attacking set-pieces at all times. You can't be offside from a throw-in and if a robot could be developed to have very strong arms they could turn the most defensive, keep-them-in-the-corner style throw-in into something where they could hit the opposition penalty spot each and every time. JShel, that's why they'd need arms!
So, my view is that robot teams will only ever play against robot teams in any serious way. Lower level teams will play friendlies against them, but only for the coverage and money it would generate, and the novelty wouldn't last long.
"I can see the point of chess computers in terms of progression of programming strategy etc, but I really can't see the point of football playing robots. I'm not saying it won't happen, I just think it highly unlikely - and somewhat pointless.
Surely a robot surgeon would be a better investment of someones time, or robot clearance divers, or even soldiers. But footballers? WTF?"
Ah but the learning curve is immense, and i'd rather see the quite predictable errors & mishaps that will surely occur happen on a football pitch and not in my or someone else's internal organs.
Paris. Doctors & Nurses.