Robots and Sports: Will robots take over sports one day?
Films about the future always portray a world that is overrun by robots that can think, talk and do basic tasks. The reality is that robot technology is very expensive and difficult to master and exploit. Today at best Honda and Toyota have developed robots
that can walk, wave and climb stairs. Is it too farfetched to think that one day soon, robots will take over sports as well? We already have some examples such as Deep Blue, the computer that beat Gary Kasparov at chess, but will we see a tennis or football
match featuring robots? The future may be closer than we think.
Over the years, the earliest anyone saw of robots in sports was probably the above mentioned Deep Blue that famously beat Kasparov in May of 1997. Even though robot technology was working away slowly and growing in the background, that now famous chess contest
was the most public sporting event to feature a robot, or a computer if you want to get technical about it. Robots are essentially very powerful computers that can move, interact with objects and will one day probably think for themselves. In 1998, a television
show premiered on British television called Robot Wars. This was a show which featured robots that fought each other. They were designed by individuals and it was a very popular series while it lasted.
The world of technology and computers was surely going to merge with that of sports sooner or later. We have seen it already in hawk-eye technology in tennis and cricket, we have seen it in video games being used to aid sportspeople to develop their skills
and we have even seen it in computer simulations and virtual reality projects in the last few years. Nowadays, several European football clubs use artificial intelligence machine to test a payer to find out the likelihood of that player receiving an injury
in the future. This technology can be used to determine possible preventive measures and potential treatments in advance.
The concept of Robot Wars mentioned above has been developed into a less violent approach by the RoboCup. This concept is a testing and trialling method to find out if robots can play football, and one day to find out whether they can play against and beat
humans in a football match. This idea was first proposed in 1993 by Professor Alan Mackworth and soon the technology mad scientists and researchers in Japan decided to develop the idea further. What was born from their discussions and studies was the Robot
World Cup or RoboCup for short.
At the moment, the RoboCup is played exclusively between teams of robots. These are self manoeuvring robots that are not controlled by humans and are able to play the game without human intervention. There are several categories of robots that are included
in the Cup; simulation, small-sized, medium-sized, four-legged and humanoid. The goal of the organisers behind this unique sporting event is pretty ambitious; to have a team of robots beat the human World Cup winning football team by 2050. At the moment though,
looking at the available technology, this looks highly unlikely despite of all the progress being made.
With robots now able to walk and avoid hitting objects on their own and even climb up stairs, it is only a matter of time before they will be able to run, turn and dribble a ball. Also technological advances in robot optics will increase to give them the
ability to see as well as humans on a football pitch. What the researchers and robot designers will have to realise is that even if a robot can play football, will it be able to have the finesse and ability to read every possible different situation that a
human footballer can. We do not know the answer to that question but if a computer can outthink a chess grand master than they might also be able to outthink a football player.
2050 is the deadline for a showdown when the world of robotics meets the world of football. It will be an exciting event and with the speed at which computer and robot technology is advancing every single day, we will really have a hard time picking a winner
in that contest.
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