Oxford at RoboCup 2008

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

2008-07-26T23:28:00.001+08:00

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.

Sunday

2008-07-23T01:45:00.007+08:00

Awake, pack, and check-out; we'll spend our last night in China in
Shanghai, nearer the airport. Drop Julian off in a taxi as he wants to
see the final competitions of his league, and go on to the railway
station to grab some tickets for later. When we get back to the Hall
the activity has focussed on the small number of matches remaining. I
watch the small wheeled robots for a while - they are fast and
furious. There is such a crowd around the AIBOs and the NOAs (i.e., 4
and 2 legged, ready built bodies) that I can't see what is going on,
and have to rely on the shouts of the spectactors instead. In the
simulation area the final competitions are being played; then the
winning teams (plus almost anybody else) line up for photographs that
they will take home as happy memories.

In the end we made 8th place in the 2D football league, 11th place in
3D football, and 7th in robot rescue. Not up with the medals, but I
am extremely proud of what Julian and Jie achieved; they beat
many teams who had far greater resources of both money and man-power,
and all in the first time that Oxford has appeared in these
Championships. We certainly feel that we have made our mark on this
competition, and we are already starting to think how we can do better
at next year's event in Austria. (We just have to find the
sponsorship first.)

We say our goodbyes, and get to the station for our train. We have to
stand all the way to Shanghai, but that's only an hour, and we meet
many of the more ordinary Chinese in the process who are witout
exception extremely friendly. After a
shower at our hotel we go out for dinner with one of the Japanese
teams. I'll be heading home in the morning, while Jie and Julian are
going on to Japan to visit various universities first.

Saturday pm

2008-07-22T19:11:00.001+08:00

We take the opportunity to spend a few hours away from the Hall, and
take a taxi into the centre of Suzhou. Where we've been so far this
week has been `new China' - lots of new buildings and wide roads and
dust. Old Suzhou is definitely different, with small sreets and tiny
shops. And people. Lots and lots of people. Some on foot, some in
cars, some on bicycles, and many on those silent electric scooters
that are the most terrifying to a pedestrian. Traffic management
seems to boil down to `keep going, use horn, and hope that somebody
backs down before a collision'. I'm amazed that it sort-of seems to
work.

The Humble Administrator's Garden in the centre is possibly the most
famous garden in China, and is an oasis of tranquillity; despite all
the other tourists that you share it with. We grab a late lunch in a
small cafe, and a taxi back to the Expo. There most of the
competitors have finished - only those in the Finals will be competing
the next day - and there's a bit of a party atmosphere developing.
Although there has been a lot of intense competition between the teams
it's all been friendly rivalry, and now people are swapping notes and
compliments, and talking about how they would like to see each of
their individual events evolve for next year. We also take the opportunity
to take a team photo of the three of us in our Oxford shirts.

There's a `banquet' in the early evening - just a very large buffet
really, given the numbers of participants. The prizes for the Junior
Leagues are all announced here, and the side that I mentioned on
Wednesday from Amberfield School, Ipswich, are declared Champions for
their league. This is the third year running that they've achieved
this accolade; I hope that they get the recognition that they deserve
for this back home. (They've been writing their own blog on this week
- see http://robocupchina.blogspot.com/.)

Meanwhile, outside the remnants of Typhoon Kalmaegi has arrived, and
it's raining heavily (but warmly). We end up heading for a bar with
some German competitiors, before going back to the apartment. There,
somewhere, some of the competitors are obviously making a real party of
it nearby, as I drop off to sleep.

Saturday Morning

2008-07-19T18:46:00.000+08:00

Get in a bit early, as there are some important matches for us today.
Jie soon finalises his team strategy for the day, and uploads it to
the tournament computer, which gives us time to look around the hall a
bit more. There are a few robot fish in a paddling pool, which
aparently they use to demonsrate waer polo. (The fish design seems
similar to that developed at Essex University.) Although most of the Junior Leagues are winding down passions are still strong around the football tables, as the small robots there battle it out for supremacy. As the better legged robots are now the ones on display I'm really struck with how much they have improved over the last couple of years. The audience (many of whom have paid to come and watch today) obviously agree, as the yells from them as the play progresses can be heard throughout the hall. Sony AIBOs (small robot dogs) certainly have the `cute factor' with everybody, although from a technical point of view I find the humanoids more interesting.

There are a couple of dozen trade stands within the hall. Some are focussed on `grown-up' robots, but a number are also from the Far East and selling robot kits aimed more at children. Again, it's pretty evident that science and technology are taken very seriously in this
part of the world. Microsoft are also demonstrating their `Robotics Studio' in a special lecture here; they've clearly got some interesting ideas, altough from our point of view it's a shame that it only runs on the Windows platform.

In another area of the Hall the rescue robot protoypes are going through their paces in a maze-like environment complete with lots of small obstacles and ramps. A standard design sems to be emerging, with a tracked vehicle with extra caterpillar tracks that can be lowered to help in particularly tricky situations. Back in the simulation area Julians latest run - where he is trying to find `casualties' in yet another setting - doesn't go as well as earlier in the week, and he ends up with a 7th place overall, and no more competitions to play tomorrow. Jie's late-night changes to his 2D team result in two genuinely thrilling mactches against two of the favourites for the championship, but in both cases he loses the matches by small margins. He will have one more placing game tomorrow, but there's no point trying to refine the team further. (Until the next competition.)

Friday 18th

2008-07-19T09:24:00.000+08:00

A good nights sleep, and an exciting trip into the Expo Centre on the
bus provided. (Traffic laws seem to be pretty optional in Shuzou.) I
get into the Expo Centre around 9, to find that Julian and Jie have
both been there some time, having important matches to play today.
Jie has a 9.30 deadline to prepare his next 3D team, and so he is
unusually able to wander around the Hall for a while having done that.
Then the matches are played out on the big screen; we are in a `hard'
group for this part of the contest and end up losing more than we win,
which puts us into 3rd place in our group, and out of the rest of the
contest. Nonetheless, a wonderful performance to get to this point in
our first year of play in this league.

Next up is Julian. There are a number of competitions within Robot
Rescue, and what Julian has to do here is essentially to drive a
number of virtual robots around a virtual disaster area, exploring as
much of the area as possible and finding casulties. The programming
side to this is largely to automate some of the robots' controls in
clever ways, and to make the information coming back from the robots
as clear as possible to him so that he can proceed as quickly and
accurately as possible. (It's amost like trying to drive 3 or so cars
at once, by engaging the cruise controls on them in turn.) It's early
days for this league and the new software available means that Julian
is finding bugs that are causing him problems. (It's never clear
whose bugs.) These carry on into his go at mapping the latest
disaster area for the competition, and so he's disappointed to end up
in 7th place overall after that ends. (But he will get a go at
another task tomorrow.

Meanwhile I've been contacted by Daniel Polani, who is from the
University of Hertfordshire and has been coming to RoboCup for some
time. He wants to set up a UK committee to promote RoboCup back home,
and having shown enthusiasm for this I find myself in a committee
meeting for a couple of hours, where the new British group is welcomed
into the international RoboCup family. RoboCup is run by a large
group of volunteers, some of whom take care of the details at
individual RoboCup events, and some of whom have a longer-term
involvement. At the top of the tree are the Trustees - around 16 from
all over the world and each with 10 years plus involvement in RoboCup.
Then there are the country representatives - we've just elected Kate
Sim from the Open University as ours; she does sterling work with the
Junior Leagues. Then there are a multitude of Technical Committees,
that decide the way that each league should evolve, and a few more
Committees for good measure. Another thing that has just happened i
tha Jie has been voted onto the Technical Committee for 3D simulation
- a great honour, and a promise of much work!

After that Jie discovers that his 2D team - which has had a rest day
today - is next drawn for tomorrow against the favourite to win the
overall competition. So he and Julian both decide that they must make
further changes to their code before their next crucial matches. I
finally manage to find ime to go to listen to a few technical talks in
the RoboCup Symposium, which is happening next door, and get some
dinner before the 3 of us head back to the apartment, a little earlier
than previous nights. The guys are still adjusting their code late
into the night though.

Thursday 17th

2008-07-18T18:53:00.000+08:00

Another prompt start, and today I've not got away from the simulation
area at all. Jie's two teams are both looking at slightly different
aspects of robot football. The `2D' game simulates wheeled robots:
this type of robot is pretty straightforward to build, and to
simulate; but not having legs makes it awkward to control a football!
Nevertheless it's been a good test-bed for thinking in particular
about how the individual robots can be programmed to act like a team.
Early examples of robot football looked like a joke; team members
would regularly crash into goals, walls, and even players from their
own team. Now in this simulation league we see games with 11 players
a side and some reasonably fluid movement of the ball from player to
player, and the hope soon is to try to move these team strategies onto
the physical robots that those researchers who are better at building
robots are building.

The `3D' simulation is relatively new, and it introduces a humanoid
model, based on a new, mass-produced robot called the NAO. So far
here - and like with the real robots - the main challenge has been to
keep the robots upright. Jie has had a hard day of it today, trying
to make sure that both his 2D and 3D teams are ready for real
competition. He's built up these teams alone; many of the teams that
he is competing against have between 4-10 people working on them.
Despite that, we are all very happy when he makes it into the next
round tomorrow for both of his teams, so ranking him overall among the
best 8 and 16 within the 2D and 3D leagues.

We've also met up with some more of the British participants here.
There's a very strong British contingent within the Junior leagues
with 10 teams from the UK, and we've met some of the teachers and
helpers involved. One common theme is how we can use the ideas from
some of the RoboCup competitions to maybe help enthuse British school
children towards science and technology. RoboCup Junior is already
doing this to some extent, but the number of qualified helpers who are
currently working to do this in the field is small. Can those of us
working now working in the Senior leagues do something to help this
along? It's an interesting question, and we'll continue this
discussion both here and when we get back home. We've also made
contact with the only other British team competing in the Senior
competition, namely with Gopal Ramhurn from Southampton, competing in
RoboCup Rescue.

There are a couple of new groups sharing the Simulation part of the
Hall. One is a Microsoft-sponsored area, promoting the use of their
new Robotics Platform. (They'll be a presentation from Microsoft
about that on Saturday.) The other is the `mixed-reality' league,
which uses tiny wheeled robots from Citizen, running on a small
surface (or plasma screen, like in the picture below). Being so small
the robots can't push very much at all, so instead the ball is
virtual, and is simulated within the computer program. The idea is
that, by using a real robot, programmers in this league have to take
into account the surprises that real life throws at us. (So, for
example, real robots never go exactly to where you tell them to go.)
On the other hand, the set-up is small and relatively cheap, and so
more accessible. It's an interesting idea, but I'm not sure how
practical it will turn out to be.

The final news of the day is that Julian has made it through the
preliminary rounds for his RoboCup rescue competition; and so the team
he is running (jointly with the University of Amsterdam) will get
through to the next round. Leave the centre around 10, and back to
the apartment after another busy and tiring day.

Wednesday 16th

2008-07-18T13:02:00.000+08:00

A good nights sleep and my first proper day in China. We grabbed some
breakfast and a cab, and were in the Expo Centre before 9. Jie and
Julian went straight to their respective desks and started to get
their programs ready for the day's play; I took the opportunity to
look around the Hall a little.

Each of the RoboCup disciplines have their own area of the Hall. As
you walk into the Hall you see the main stage, which is used for the
few official ceremonies and the robot/human dance events. To the
right is the simulation area where we are situated; only some very
small robots here, and otherwise a computer geek's paradise with rows
of desks, network connections, and at the front some seats and
big-screen projectors so the audience can see what's going on as the
games are played inside the virtual world of the computer. Behind
that is where the Junior games are played, based on robot rescue,
football, and dance. On the other side of the Hall you get the main
real robot competitions, based on several different designs and sizes
of robot.

The most striking thing this morning is the number of children around
the place. School teams have come to participate from all over the
world; as you might expect there are many from the Far East, but it
still seems like every continent (other than Antartica) is well
represented. Then there are all the Chinese school parties coming in
to spectate, in their well-ordered lines and yelps of joy when they see
the robots.

This first morning I'm focusing more on the Junior area, after a
quick look at some of the humanoid robots. The humonoid robots are the
first step within RoboCup towards robots that can move around like
humans can, but they are still relatively clumsy. All of them often
fall down, and the first thing they have to be taught is how to pick
themselves up again! But over the last couple of years `cheap'
mass-produced humnoid robots have become available, and this has
democratised the work on humanoid motion from being something that the
fortunate few engaged in to something that almost anybody can attempt.
Right now, the robot are being adjusted, ready for their serious work
later.

Around the Junior area there are many excited children warming up (and a few
young adults). The key idea is for the children to build up some kit
robots, and they are all proudly adjusting and testing their
creations. The robot dancers in particular are being dressed in all
their finery; the idea here is that they put on a good and artistic
display. Junior soccer uses a simplified one-on-one soccer arena, and
the games are already underway, with lots of cheers and groans from the
robot creators and the spectators.

Robocup rescue is a discipline with the eventual aim of being able to
build robotic devices that might be useful in a disaster situation.
For example, after an earthquake or a terrorist attack one issue to
confront rescuers is where to direct their scarce resources. There
have already been a few uses of simple robotic devices in this sort of
situation, in which a remote-controlled buggy is sent on the end of a
wire into an area of interest by remote control. If the operator
detects a casualty them the human rescuers can start digging; and if
the roof falls in and destroys the robot then that's sad, but much
better than losing a human rescuer. Robocup rescue is still at an
early stage of development, and in the Senior leagues is split between
the `engineering' problems of building useful robots that can actually
get in and do useful work without getting trapped, and a simulation
activity which use the core of a computer game program to design a
virtual disaster area for the simulated robots to explore. (The
former is more realistic, but using the latter allows almost anybody
to make a contribution to our knowledge of what to do with the robots
when they are finally built.) The Junior version to the rescue task
is much simplified, with a robot following a line in the environment,
counting stick-figure `casualties' as it passes through.

Over the course of the afternoon Jie and Julian start competing in the
preliminary rounds. Julian starts reasonably confident, but then hits
some technical snags; Jie starts on a low ebb, but cheers up as his 2D
and 3D football teams start winning. Meanwhile just 100m away the
root/human dance performances begin, in which school teams dance with
robots of their own creation. The performances are all fascinating,
and of different styles; the one that the girls at Amberfield school
do to the new `St Trinians' song is especially hard to ignore! It's a
long day in the end, as we get back to the apartment around 10, and I
crash out again.

Tuesday 15th

2008-07-17T16:26:00.000+08:00

Arrived at Shanghai airport late morning, after an overnight flight from London via Amsterdam. Grabbed some lunch, had a ride on the Maglev train, and caught the coach to Shuzou. Only about 150km away, but crawled round the shouth of Shanghai in heavy traffic so took 3 hours in all. Got to the International Expo Centre on the outskirts of the city late afternoon, and met up with Jie and Julian who had arrived a couple of days earlier to set up. Had a quick look around the massive hall containing all the activities as participants were finishing their setting up, then over to the student apartment that the three of us are sharing. A quick bit of dinner, then gratefully to bed.