This is Robo Cup.
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Leipzig, Germany.
Hundreds of teams from more than 40 countries have come to compete in Robo Cup, the global robot soccer tournament that see's teams of bots battling to win glory for their human creators On pint-sized pitches, robots from the humanoid standard platform, wheeled, and even AI leagues are vying for victory, most built or programmed by students hoping to win distinction for their school or university.
In robocops, there are no remote controls.
Winning depends on winning smart, autonomous soccerbots that play with no human interaction.
Competing teams wind them up and when the whistle blows, let them go.
In the humanoid leagues, half the battle is finding economic and efficient ways to build the robot players.
This is Cascade, which is one of our so-called hand bots.
This is a 3D printed robot which we designed ourselves.
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We get quite attached because after some years, when you work with the robots, you recognize that every robot has some specialty, Like, [UNKNOWN], he's always falling down, and.
Yeah, it's more like children because you have to take care about them all the time.
They have to have two legs, arms, they have to walk upright and yeah, that's makes a lot of things more difficult because they are falling down, and this is still one, even after a lot of years of research, this is like the biggest problem we have in now.
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The problem of staying upright isn't limited to the humanoid bots.
meet the Standard Platform League, where all teams compete using the NAO robot from SoftBank Robotics.
The SPL presents a unique challenge.
When every bot is physically identical, victory comes down to who can code the most sophisticated software with teams hoping upgraded code will lead to better performing robots and a superior spot on the leaderboard.
We now hopefully work faster and more stable.
And our stream strategy was improved.
Last year, we were on the third place, and hopefully we come to the finals.
We'll always learn something, try something new in the code base, and see if the robot can behave better than last year.
So I think a self-improvement is one of our goals, every year, participating in it.
When a team wins this competition, you know they have the best programmers, basically.
There's no if and but, or they can do some hardware better.
They can solder better, they can buy better equipment.
It's a nice flat playing field, and a nice way to compare certain universities.
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It's a glorious afternoon here in the railroad cup stadium.
An excited crowd eager to see our Boston Blue put on a show.
Coach says we won't believe some of the new tactics on display here.
Robo cop is older than you think, okay not this old.
Robo cop began in 1997, it's ultimate aim to develop intelligent humanoid robots.
capable of beating human pro footballers by 2050.
Every tournament brings fresh challenges.
This year, the bots must play using a new black and white ball, which has thrown off many of the robot's imaging senses.
So that's making it very hard to see in any condition.
And then on top of that we're dealing with this outdoor arena So, if you use any cameras you know to change the exposes between the sunshine and the robots cannot do that automatically on the field so the change in light can be really dramatic as well.
The whole aim of roboconvo2015 is that we can play against people or a couple champions so we have to get outdoor one day.
It may be sometime before these bots are troubling Renaldo and [UNKNOWN] but the technical advances born out of this competition could change the world much sooner.
We've had a blast at the Robo Show.
Whether it's meeting the teams and seeing just how dedicated they are or watching the actual games, which are surprisingly tense and feature a lot of adorable robots falling over.
The Onsoku Robot Cop host challenges to build rescue robots or machines that are the home support to disabled or elderly people, as well as junior leagues and even robot theater.
The bots treading the boards.
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Uniting this diverse festival of robotics is a shared goal, advancing artificial intelligence, and ushering in the glorious robot future.
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[UNKNOWN].
This is literally it.
[SOUND] Yes!
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