Excellent! Are the Olympics over yet? I wasn't really paying
attention, because I've been RIVETED by the TRUE FASCINATING
trials and tribulations of the 22nd Century's greatest athletes,
the simubots who participate in the ROBOCUP TWO THOUSAND!
Man, I continue to be amazed by the very cool shit that people do with simulated
and actual robot competitions. Like, for example, the fine RARS robot
racing league, or whatever. Sports are too trivial for humans to participate in
any more, is my understanding of the matter. It's time for ROBOT SPORTS, like
for real.
And that's the whole idea behind the RoboCup 2000. It's based on the children's
game "soccer", which isn't well known in the rest of the world but is
responsible for many important advances in American society, such as minivans,
Hacky Sacks and sports bra ads. Anyways, in the RoboCup game, folks write
software for lots of different robots -- each player has to be autonomous and
have different code/data/strategies/etc. -- and then the robots are on teams and
the teams play soccer against each other.
MOST of the soccer happens in the magical ghost world of computer simulations,
where everything interesting happens anyways. But there's also side-leagues for
real, walkin' talkin' rootin' tootin' robots, who push around real "soccer
balls" (as they're called by aficianadoes of the game), and make goals and shit.
There's even a sub-league for re-programmed Sony AIBOs. How crazy is
that?
Personally, I think AIBO is kinda gross and cutesy and stupid -- like, there's
one in this Janet Jackson video, and like, what's up with that? -- but it'd be
cool to watch them play soccer, eh? Actually, it'd be better if they had
flame-throwers, but I'm not particular. Soccer is violent enough.
Anyways, where was I? Oh, yeah, so Robocup 2000: big tournament, there's
streaming video and shit of the actual games, with live commentary and all that.
It looks fun, check it out and maybe write some code for your own team, eh? Tell
them Pigdog sent you.
