Postscript: I've seen the future, and it's got legs

Although I've been involved in various robot football projects for a
while this was my first time at RoboCup itself. Most scientists are a
least a little competitive, in their desire to be first to develop or
publish a new result, but RoboCup is pretty unique in the way that it
takes some basic packages of scientific goals and uses these as the
focus of some friendly competition, and thus generates truly useful
results in the process. It's also a public show, and an amazing
vehicle for tapping into the enthusiasm that schoolkids have for
science worldwide with the Junior programme. Put all this together
and you have a heady mix that I can see becoming addictive.

Back in the early days of RoboCup there was significant challenge in
building any sort of robot that could be said to kick a ball about.
The easiest mobile robot to build has wheels, and so these have
dominated the first decade of this (and similar) events. Wheels are
good when you can use them, as if nothing else they are a more
energy-efficient way of moving about than legs are. However there are
plenty of places where wheels are won't do the job, and so researchers
have been looking into legged transportation for decades. You need a
lot of motors to build a walking machine, and even more for the robot
to balance well in the process; it takes a baby quite a while to pick
up the knack. The Sony AIBO robot dog didn't do too bad a job of it
with 12 motors in its 4 legs, but bipedal motion requires much more
finesse in balancing. Thus in attempts at robot football with
humanoid robots so far, a lot of work has gone into just keeping them
upright.

However this year at RoboCup it is clear that the tide is turning.
There was about as much floor space in the Hall dedicated to legged
robots as to ones with wheels, and although many of the humanoid
robots did spend much of their time picking themselves up, the best of
them didn't. Also, there are a number of humanoid robots kits
available now, which makes the job of putting a team together for
events like this somewhat easier. (We're even thinking of having a go
ourselves.)

Don't get me wrong. It'll be some time before the humanoid robots
come close to the dexterity of those with wheels, and they'll never be
as efficient for the same reason that travelling by bicycle is easier
than walking. But in terms of looking towards devices that can
operate around the home or garden; climb stairs; or even play
football: events like RoboCup will quickly make these possible in a
way that seemed unimaginable just a little while ago.

Roboticists have had a bad press for not getting their creations into
the home. It might take a few years; but they are now certainly on
their way.