by Anthony FalcoThe organizers of RoboCup, the annual soccer tournament that pits robots against each other, recently released a statement that they intend to build a team of autonomous robot players good enough to beat a team of professional human players by 2050. Judging by this year’s RoboCup challenge in Japan, that seems optimistic.The only thing these humanoid robots do better than gently kicking the ball is falling over. That being said, the robots’ spunk brings international audiences and more than 3,500 dedicated developers from 40 different countries to compete.RoboCup was conceived after IBM’s Deep Blue defeated the world’s best chess player in 1997. The tournament’s founders wanted to see if the same could happen with soccer. While some of these bots have a long way to go, the strides and slide tackles they’ve made along the way are quite impressive.
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