We’re pretty sure that this wouldn’t qualify for the upcoming Robocup, but researchers at Carnegie Mellon University have been keeping themselves busy lately by playing soccer with robots. But they haven’t been playing skins vs. sims — they’re having everyone play on mixed human/robot teams in order to see what takes for robots and humans can cooperate. But it gets even geekier. All the humans ride around on Segway scooters and all the robots are built out of modified Segways.
The project is designed to allow researchers to look at human-robot interactions in which humans and robots are on nearly equal footing, said Manuela Veloso, a professor of computer science at Carnegie Mellon University. The two types of players will have nearly the same acceleration, the same top speed, the same turning abilities, and will use the same ball manipulation device, she said… The preliminary set of Segway soccer rules calls for human players to carry devices that allow them to communicate with the robotic players. The players will use a size five soccer ball, but for safety’s sake, dribbling is not allowed, only passing. And to encourage human-robot interaction, the sequence of passes leading to a goal will include at least one robot and one human. The game will be played on a soccer field proportional to a standard soccer field, but scaled depending on the number of players.
