Are there already football-playing robots?

During this European Cup season, we asked ourselves the million-euro question: What will football look like in the future? The subject is not simple. However, what is happening around us today can provide us with some good answers. Besides, is this fantasized future really that far away? Do football-playing robots exist today? Discover the future of football with us.

RoboKeeper: The Rampart of Cages

This robot is none other than... the best goalkeeper in the world. Since 2007, individuals and football professionals have been trying to get past this barrier. Messi and Neymar have tried. Numerous videos have been published in which RoboKeeper stops shots from some of the best players on the planet. But how does this robot achieve this feat?

Developed in collaboration with the Fraunhofer Institute in Dortmund, this 2.0 goalkeeper is equipped with two cameras capable of recording up to 90 images per second. While the color of the ball contrasts sufficiently with its surroundings, these two "eyes" allow it to track every movement of the ball.

A software program will then quickly calculate the trajectory of the ball since shots can easily reach 100 km/h! All this calculation, from sending the ball to the robot's action, must not exceed 0.3 seconds to hope to avoid a goal. At this speed, it is estimated that RoboKeeper's reaction is about 20 times faster than a Formula 1 car.

Let's remember, however, that this robot doesn't play in the same league as our usual players. The shooting point is 9 meters away, as opposed to the regulation 11 meters. In addition, the goals are 2 x 4 meters, compared to the 2.5 x 7.3 meters of a real soccer goal.

The goalkeeper is positioned on an axis that cannot move from left to right. It is therefore mandatory that he be the size of the goal, otherwise balls too far from the center could not be stopped. This robot is above all an attraction. To avoid frustrating testers, it is possible to adjust the difficulty across seven levels, so that a few lucky players still emerge victorious.

Mini Cheetah: A Guardian Able to Learn

This robotic version of a cheetah is also capable of stopping gunfire. This is the subject of a study conducted by the University of California, Berkeley. The results are very conclusive. After their tests, Mini Cheetah stopped 87.5% of the shots fired at it.

It's important to note that, unlike RoboKeeper, this four-legged guardian is completely free to move. It isn't tied to any axis, hence the diversity of possible movements to stop the ball: it can take a side step, dive, or even jump while landing on its feet. This new range of possible movements presented the researchers with numerous challenges. First, they had to teach it how to move, and above all, how to use the most efficient movement to reach the ball in an extremely short period of time.

The scientists then taught it all these techniques in a simulation. Using reinforcement learning, the robot was able to train in a virtual world until it was able to adapt its movements to the trajectories of the balloons.

Once this experience was gained, the actual robot was put into operation to achieve more than adequate results.

This experiment demonstrated that these challenges can be met. Researchers are now working on training this four-legged robot to shoot.

RoboCup: The World Cup for Football Robots

What if I told you that the robot version of the World Cup already exists? Originating in Japan, this competition has been running since 1996! Organizers predict that by 2050, robots will be competing against real humans on the pitch.

This championship takes place all over the world, and we're lucky enough to have it in France in 2023! If you're interested in the subject and you're in the Bordeaux area, don't hesitate to check out this extraordinary sport.

Over the past 20 years, RoboCup has diversified considerably. It has become a trade show that brings together more than 3,000 robotics enthusiasts from 45 countries through various competitions.

The most popular competition today is still football. Within this sport, there are three different categories: the humanoid league, the rolling robot league, and the simulation category.

Diversification has allowed the RoboCup to look beyond the world of football. You can also attend rescue competitions, where robots will try to rescue a person as quickly as possible. There's also a competition for the development of home companion robots, or even industrial robots!

This place is above all a crossroads of ideas and innovations in the field. Many of the events are dedicated to younger generations, organizing their own competitions to showcase these future robotics talents.

In this World Cup year, we've seen that human-powered football still has a bright future ahead of it. But recent advances show that what might have been considered impossible a few years ago may not be so far away. And who will you root for at the next RoboCup?

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Sources:

RoboKeeper. RoboKeeper Overview [online] . Available at: www.robokeeper.com (25/11/2022).

ARXIV. Creating a Dynamic Quadrupedal Robotic Goalkeeper with Reinforcement Learning . 2210.04435. ARXI. 10/10/2022

RoboCup. What is it? [online] . Available at: www.robocup.fr (25/11/2022).