Spelman SpelBots Lead World Competition
Spelman College students recently attended this year’s RoboCup, a robotics competition held annually in different locations worldwide. How’d they do? They tied for first place!
The SpelBots program is the brainchild of Dr. Andrew B. Williams, who wanted to create a team for “the Olympics of robotics and artificial intelligence.”
This was not their first appearance at RoboCup; these young women are experienced roboticists. Check out this 2007 video of their participation in the Passing Challenge that year. There’s a lot of work involved to make that one pass from ‘bot to ‘bot!
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July 15th, 2009 at 3:14 am
Well actually, Spelbots tied against another Nao team at RoboCup Japan Open 2009, where only two Nao teams entered the competition. The RoboCup 2009 world championships took place in Graz. Austria this year ( with IIRC 24 attending teams) and the SpelBots didn´t attend. Winner was team B-Human from germany, scoring 11:1 goals in the final against their opponent. So no, SpelBots didn´t tie for first in RoboCup 2009, they didn´t even attend.
July 15th, 2009 at 10:45 am
Well, then I stand ( err, sit) corrected! Hey, add some links here so we can see what B-Human did in the world championships, and I’ll track down what the heck the SpelBots actually accomplished.
(Side note: turns out RoboCup has several subcategories of competitions. Guess I’d better get my facts straight!)
July 15th, 2009 at 1:39 pm
Well it´s the scientificblogging.com article that´s wrong, not your fault.
The Spelbots accomplished a tie at the RoboCup Japan Open 2009. Specifically, they took part in the Standard Platform League competition. The Standard Platform League switched to the new 2-legged Nao robot from the 4-legged Sony Aibos in the last 2 years, so this was the first SPL competition with Nao robots at a Japan Open.
There are also other leagues, like the Small Size League, Middle size League and Humanoid League.
There are many local open RoboCup competitions around the world. This year Iran Open, German Open and Japan Open already took place. AFAIK a Mexican Open even will follow later this year.
“The” RoboCup (the worldchampionships) took place at the beginning of July in Graz, Austria. While a tie at the Japan Open is an achievement and the SpelBots can be proud of getting their Naos to work so well, that doesn´t necessarily make them lead the world competition or RoboCup champions.
You can take a look at some of the RoboCup finals on YouTube:
Standard Platform League:
http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=817BE08690D496AF
Humanoid League:
http://www.youtube.com/user/DarmstadtDribblers#play/user/23B57AD2A2A1D6BD
Middle Size League:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pb6OB3OJbmI