What is Qwikipedia?
Ever been on Wikipedia to look up an article? More often than not, we start with one topic, click on a few links and within no time are reading about something else.
Qwikipedia is a game that tries to quench this curiosity in us. The objective is to get to a particular wiki page, starting from a specific article, using minimal clicks. There is no single correct answer, so we might surprise ourselves by finding new routes each time!
Friday’s Free rider
>Humanoid Robot —> >Arjen Robben
Humanoid Robot
Athena created history on Monday. As the first humanoid robot travelling as a paid passenger in an airline, Athena boarded a Lufthansa flight from Los Angeles to Frankfurt. With cameras and reporters buzzing around her, she really did create a stir.
Most of my learning with respect to humanoid robots does not stem from any specific textbook. In fact, Giskard Reventlov and Daneel Olivaw - robots that appear in Isaac Asimov’s novels - were among the first humanoids I was exposed to. But considering the laws of robotics were formulated from what Asimov wrote in his science fictions, it really isn’t that bad a source to learn from.
Humanoid robots are robots that appear to have a human form to aid their functionality. That means that these robots generally have a head, torso, two legs and two arms.
Hydra
In 2006, a humanoid robot REEM-A, designed to play chess, confronted Hydra, a chess engine. Apart from playing chess, REEM-A was also used as a walking, manipulation speech and vision development platform.
A chess engine believed to have a FIDE equivalent playing strength of over Elo 3000, Hydra represented a considerable leap in the strength of computer chess machines. Before the project was discontinued in 2006, Hydra had already played in a number of places, including Austria, the Netherlands and Abu Dhabi.
Netherlands
A small, densely populated country in Western Europe, the Netherlands has a predominantly low, flat geography. In fact, the name Netherlands literally means “low country” in reference to this.
Ever since I started following football, I have been supporting Netherlands at the international level. The orange jersey was the initial draw that pulled me towards them, but with time I have learnt to appreciate their tactics and style of play. And with world class players in the form of Robin van Persie and Arjen Robben part of the ranks, it only gets better each time they take the field.
Arjen Robben
A player with Bayern Munich and the Netherlands, Robben is considered to be among the finest in the current crop of players, world over. A forward who is also deployed in the wings many a time, Robben catches the eye with his evasive dribbling skills, pace on and off the ball, and crossing abilities.
On Tuesday, Robben notched up his 100th goal for Bayern Munich in the Bundesliga game against Freiburg. Be it PSV in Netherlands, Chelsea in the Premier League, Real Madrid in the La Liga or Bayern Munich now, Robben has won a number of titles with each of the clubs he has played with. He hasn’t enjoyed the same success at the international level though, finishing second and third in the 2010 and 2014 World Cups.
So the path that we have traversed today is:
Humanoid Robot —> Hydra —> Netherlands —> Arjen Robben
Three clicks! Hop over. It’s time for the next question:
Monday’s Marauder
>Gabriel Garcia Marquez —> >FIFA
Send in your paths for the above to school@thehindu.co.in with the subject “Qwikipedia”.
