The team participates in the competition held in Graz, Austria, and actually qualified for the quarter-finals stage, for the first time in the history of the Israeli Academy in the uniform robot categories, where in fact their programming is mainly important.
The Israeli robot team of Bar-Ilan University participating in the World Robot Soccer Championship (RoboCup) currently taking place in Graz, Austria, recorded an unprecedented achievement when it advanced to the second stage of the tournament. The team beat the Mexico team in the early stage with a score of 0:1 in penalties, lost 1:0 to the world champion Australia and parted with Turkey in a zero draw. Advancing to the second stage gives the robots from Bar Ilan a place among the 16 best teams in the world.
Just for the sake of comparison, this is a greater achievement even than the achievement of the Israeli national teams in the 1970 World Cup in Mexico and the 1976 Montreal Olympics, the only two tournaments to which an adult Israeli national team qualified.
This is the first time in the history of the prestigious tournament that an Israeli team advances to the second stage. The Israeli team consists of 6 robots and nine researchers, and the Israeli delegation is headed by Prof. Gal Kaminka - a senior researcher in the Department of Computer Science and in the Center for Research and Dr. Eli Kolberg from the School of Engineering, along with computer science students.
In an email interview with the site The Science of Graz held by Prof. Kaminka this evening (Thursday), he explains: "This is a very prestigious competition, the largest in the world for robots. There are two divisions in the competition: Junior, intended for children and teenagers, in which Israel has participated for years, thanks to the tireless work of Dr. Eli Kohlberg from the Bar-Ilan School of Engineering. Graduate students participate in the graduate division (usually two-thirds, but sometimes a bachelor's degree as well), and there are several different leagues, most of them soccer leagues. These leagues differ in the type of robots that compete (mainly dimensions), and in each of them there are dozens of teams from around the world."
Never in the history of the competition, since it was founded in 1997, has an Israeli team participated
In the senior division (despite two attempts by the Technion to build a suitable team, at the beginning
2000s). I was active in RoboCup from its inception until 2002, always as part of groups
American women. Eli Kohlberg joined (within the junior division) starting in 1999.
The league we participate in is called Standard Platform League and it is the only league
where all the teams have exactly the same robots (identical in terms of hardware). The result is that the test is a test of each group's software capabilities. When the robots come to us for programming, they actually have zero capabilities: they can't walk, can't turn around, can't recognize objects on the camera, nothing.
How long did it take you to program the robots?
In my estimation, to build a winning team in this league requires about 6 man years. We had about two calendar months at our disposal (since the robots were available to us). The eight members of the group, students with second and third degrees in the Bar-Ilan Department of Computer Science, worked for these two months to breathe "life" into the robots' bodies, by programming the abilities of walking, computer vision, movement in space, kicking and directing the ball, and combining all these abilities. The robots can in principle communicate with each other, but due to time constraints, we did not take advantage of this possibility, so they play "Brazilian football" - completely individual. By the way, this applies to most or all teams in the competition. The group of students is led by and supported by Dr. Kohlberg from the Bar-Ilan School of Engineering.
And what is it like to be ranked in such a place?
"We completed our goals for this year and qualified for the second stage of the competition, of the top 16 teams (out of the 24 participating teams). Realistically, it is unlikely that we will be able to climb to the final stage. But to put things in proper proportion, I would like to mention that even now this is a result that surpasses all the achievements of the Israel (human) national football team since the establishment of the state..."
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Here is the official RoboCap website
http://www.robocup.org
There are videos there..
The comparison between the success of the robot team and the human team is simply a robotic comparison.
The article does not say how many robot teams exist in this league or in the world in general, so it is very possible that the achievement of the (human) Israeli team in the World Cup, which managed to qualify for the World Cup out of about two hundred teams in the world, is greater than this honorable achievement.
Response to Ofer: My friend, the IQ of one robot is more than the IQ of the entire Israeli national team
Good to be among the 16 is an excellent achievement
And we all hope that next year we will advance to at least the quarterfinals (among the 8)
Lafar: Note that in the quarter-finals the team actually managed to score a field goal! Like Israel in the Mexico World Cup, only then they didn't advance to the next level...
A few years ago I bought a Sony robot in the shape of a dog.
The dog already knew how to play an excellent ball (although not real football), take pictures and transmit to the PC. One could even easily give him commands to kick his leg, raise his hands and turn around.
No Sony, the quality of the robot was like the quality of the televisions.
What channel is it on?
And seriously, I've been reading articles on the subject for a long time and never add links on the subject. It will be very interesting to see such a game
Congratulations on the achievement, but to compare it to the Israeli soccer team? Why ? In addition, where is the success with the robot team failing to score even one field goal? Penalty not counted.