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Rediff.com  » Business » 3 robots and a soccer team

3 robots and a soccer team

Last updated on: April 2, 2010 14:50 IST

Image: A robot soccer player.
Photographs: David Moir/Reuters

Meet Android FC, a three-robot soccer team, developed by the scientists of the School of Infomatics at the University of Edinburgh.

The teal consists of a two-foot-high (0.6m) striker, defender and goalkeeper.

The robots are fully autonomous and have embedded processors that enable them to make sense of the surroundings and react to the movements of other players.

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3 robots and a soccer team

Image: Scientists with Android FC.
Photographs: David Moir/Reuters

The robots play the the game using artificial intelligence. The only human allowed on the pitch after the toss is the referee.

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3 robots and a soccer team

Image: Robots recreate a sending off incident during a photo call.
Photographs: David Moir/Reuters

Edinburgh university's School of Infomatics hope their squad will eventually reach the humanoid finals in Turkey in 2011.

The international competition was founded in 1997. Last year it attracted 407 teams from 43 different countries.

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3 robots and a soccer team

Image: A robot showing off its skills.
Photographs: David Moir/Reuters

The ultimate goal of the RoboCup project is to develop a team of humanoid robots by 2050 that can play and win against the human world champion football team.

Sethu Vijayakumar, who helped build the robots, said: "RoboCup is a key challenge in robotics research."

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3 robots and a soccer team

Image: A robot gets ready to score a goal.
Photographs: David Moir/Reuters

The team of scientists has been working on the project since autumn 2009.

They will display the squad's silicon skills at the Edinburgh International Science Festival this weekend.

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