The venue and tech preparations are almost ready for the final of the first robot artificial intelligence (AI) football competition in China, which will be held on Saturday in Beijing.
The event, hosted by the RoBoLeague World Robot Soccer League, also serves as the first test competition for the upcoming inaugural World Humanoid Robot Games, the 3-on-3 humanoid robot football match will take place in the Beijing Economic-Technological Development Area, widely known as the Yizhuang Development Zone.
During the event, all participating robots will use AI strategies to compete autonomously, combining the cutting-edge technology with the charm of traditional sports.
At present, the layout of the venue for the final has been basically completed, which can accommodate about 500 people to watch the game up close and see the robot's operating accuracy and intelligent decision-making.
The official competition venue is an artificial turf 14 meters in length and 9 meters in width, which is much smaller than a regular football field. This is due to considerations of the robot's moving speed.
Following rounds of fierce qualifying games, four Chinese teams of humanoid robot footballers have been selected to take part in the finals on Saturday evening.
The teams also made their final preparations on Friday. Through two-on-two group simulation matches, they are constantly improving their strategies through trial and error and debugging.
The robots have a total of 23 freely moving joints on their heads, chests, arms, legs and other parts of their bodies, which enables them to achieve flexible movement and accurate posture control. Unlike traditional football, the robots use the tiptoe to push the ball in the game.
"If the robot touches the ball with its toes, the movement is more stable and smoother. If the robot pushes the ball with the arch of its foot, the contact area with the ball will be larger, which requires a higher degree of control over the ball's movement path when passing or shooting," said Wang Yonghao, who is in charge of the operations of Saturday's competition.
Robot developers at Beijing-based Booster Robotics said that as a highly competitive sport, football not only requires the robots to have the ability to perceive the field, but also challenges their resistance to impact in movement.
"Our robot can currently withstand a 15 Newton-second impact," said Xu Lei, marketing manager of Booster Robotics.
In addition to the basic "physical conditions" to be a football player, developers said that the robot also has a correspondingly large power consumption, enough to last a whole football game.
"There are halftime breaks in robots’ competitions, but they don't actually need those. Our robots can play for up to two hours on battery life. In fact, we test each batch of our robots with 20 consecutive football matches without stopping. If the battery runs out, we replace the battery until the end of the 20 games," said Cheng Hao, founder and CEO of Booster Robotics.
Venue, tech preparations almost ready for AI robot football match in Beijing
