Newcastle canine soccer stars are heading to the World Cup.

 

Monday 22 May, 2006

 

The University of Newcastle’s NUbots are ready to take on the World in robotic soccer at the RoboCup in Germany. There’s a lot on the line after a narrow defeat last year. 

 

“The German team is currently the world champion. Last year the final ended in a draw, but Germany won 2-1 in the penalty shoot out,” explains Stephan Chalup one of the team members.

 

NUbots is the team name given to a group of research students and academics. The robots are Sony Aibos (robotic “dogs”) and are programmed to play soccer on four legs, and this year’s tournament has been scheduled to coincide with the actual World Cup.

 

“They’re completely autonomous, they have all their work done internally and have no interaction with humans. They take images from a camera that’s in their head and process them to do everything they need to play soccer,” says Michael Quinlan, NUbot team leader and Research Fellow at the University of Newcastle.  

 

The NUbots compete in the top level of the Four-Legged League of the RoboCup, and they’ve placed in the top three for the past four years. Dr Chalup says the success of the team is due to a combination of expertise.

 

“We have a group of very motivated students working on the NUbots, with three university medalists in the team so far. They’re great guys with a lot of skill behind them.”

 

“The collaboration, with supervision between electrical engineering, control theory, machine intelligence, and statistics, gives a very solid background and approach for the competition.”

 

The NUbots will take on 24 teams from around the world, with America, Japan and the other Australian teams also tipped to be strong contenders.  But it’s the home side that remains the Novocastrians’ biggest rival.

 

“It will be one of the loudest and most emotional RoboCup competitions because the Germans love both the robotic soccer and the human version. The Germans will be very keen to beat us again.” 

 

The NUbots will compete from 14 to 20 June in Bremen Germany.

 

More information can be found at www.robocup.org and www.robots.newcastle.edu.au

 

For media comment please contact Rick Middleton CDSC – 492 16033  Michael Quinlan – 492 16163