INTRODUCTION SLOW SOCCER soccer player slowly takes tiny steps toward an orange ball and Athen gives the ball a soft kick It slowly rolls toward the net But the goalie hardly even reacts This might sound like a pretty boring soccer game But what if you knew the players were actually robots and this game was an international championship game The RoboCup is a robot competition that invites scientists and inventors to experiment with new technologies in a fun way Teams build and program robots to play against one another Eventually roboticists hope to build a team of robots that can compete against and even beat human World Cup champions Those who compete at RoboCup share computer software robot designs and other good ideas with one another to help develop better robots One day you just might see humans playing robots against
A RoboCup soccer game takes place in China 2015 in
CHAPTER 1 BEGINNING BATTLES Robots can do many amazing things So it makes sense that the people who invent these amazing machines would want to compare their designs and find out which robot is the biggest the fastest the smartest or the strongest In the world of robot competitions the challenge and creativity of robot building meets the excitement of sporting events But robot competitions actually have their roots in a much quieter game Contestants work with their robots during a 2014 competition China in
Programmers gather around Robert Q a computer programmed to play chess The computer was beaten in its first competition with a human in 1967 CHESS CHALLENGE In 1967 Richard Greenblatt finished writing a computer program called MacHack This was the first computer program that let a computer play a game of chess against a human This computer program became a model for other similar computer programs These days chess players often use computer programs to help them practice and get better at playing game the
