{"id":298,"date":"2007-06-15T23:23:00","date_gmt":"2007-06-15T21:23:00","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2007-06-15T23:23:00","modified_gmt":"2007-06-15T21:23:00","slug":"machines-battle-at-robo-olympics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/hardware\/298-machines-battle-at-robo-olympics.html","title":{"rendered":"Machines battle at robo-olympics"},"content":{"rendered":"

Engineers from some two dozen countries are pitting their creations against one another at RoboGames, deemed the planet’s largest robot competition by Guinness World Records.<\/font><\/p>\n

This year’s RoboGames<\/a> features 83 categories, 18 of them devoted to walking "android" robots designed in human forms.<\/font><\/p>\n

A highlight of the event remains robot combat in which machines weighing as much as 154kg destroy one another in what amounts to a demolition derby behind bulletproof glass.<\/font><\/p>\n

The last robot still in operating condition wins.<\/font><\/p>\n

Battle robots feature weapons such as saw blades, flame throwers, and hydraulic hammers.<\/font><\/p>\n

"The combat robots keep getting better each year," said RoboGames founder David Calkins.<\/font><\/p>\n

"We’ve got teams flying in from around the US and Canada, Brazil, Mexico, the UK, Netherlands, Australia, and even Iran just to compete in the robot combat."<\/font><\/p>\n

Calkins establish the event in 2004, initially dubbing it the ROBOlympics.<\/font><\/p>\n

His said his aim is to provide a forum for "cross-pollination" between engineers that tend to remain isolated in specialty fields such as computer programming and mechanical engineering.<\/font><\/p>\n

Among RoboGames gaining in popularity this year is soccer in which androids scramble to score goals the way human players do.<\/font><\/p>\n

US robots will defend the "android soccer" gold medal won last year after besting Britain’s metallic team.<\/font><\/p>\n

"Football is very big this year," Calkins told AFP. "And there are lots of humanoids."<\/font><\/p>\n

This year’s RoboGames hosts the Federation of International Robosoccer Association’s 12th annual Robot World Cup.<\/font><\/p>\n

FIRA is the world’s oldest robot soccer organization, and teams from more than 20 countries will participate in its robot soccer events.<\/font><\/p>\n

"The improvements these guys make in their robots each year always amazes me, and I see great robots all the time," Calkins said.<\/font><\/p>\n

"It’s great to see soccer alongside fighting robots and all the other events – everyone is really learning from each other."<\/font><\/p>\n

Along with robot sumo in which the first to be shoved from a small ring loses, there are robot kung-fu matches and a marathon.<\/font><\/p>\n

"Robots will cartwheel up and down the field as teams try to score," according to RoboGame organizers.<\/font><\/p>\n

"Korean will be tough to beat in the other events, although it’s anybody’s guess who will win in the first-ever attempt at android basketball."<\/font><\/p>\n

Along with having fun, the RoboGames are meant to inspire engineers to make breakthroughs that result in better-built machines that can emulate tasks humans take for granted, such as finding one’s way along a street or jumping.<\/font><\/p>\n

RoboGames organisers said "expect to be awed" by a previous Gold-medal winning Japanese robot named "Plen" that has been modified to roller skate and skateboard.<\/font><\/p>\n

"Robotics is becoming the new lifestyle sport of the thinking age," RoboGames organisers said. "The Renaissance had classical music; we have high-powered DC motors."<\/font><\/p>\n

Comments<\/a><\/p>\n

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Robots from around the world will compete for supremacy in soccer, combat, sumo wrestling and other arenas beginning Friday at a machine version of the Olympics in San Francisco.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sma_x_autopost_status":"idle","_sma_x_autopost_error":"","_sma_x_post_id":"","_sma_facebook_post_id":"","_sma_instagram_post_id":"","_sma_threads_post_id":"","_sma_x_attempts":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-298","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-hardware"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/298"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=298"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/298\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=298"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=298"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=298"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}