RoboCup U.S. Open Championship May 2-3

Story posted April 27, 2009

Bowdoin will host the 2009 RoboCup U.S. Open for the Standard Platform League Saturday and Sunday, May 2 and 3 in the new Sidney J. Watson Arena. (The event will be webcast live here.)

"We are excited to be the first non-hockey or athletics-related event hosted in this venue," says Joho Strom '09, captain of Bowdoin's Northern Bites RoboCup team.

"It has great lighting, a superb sound system, and also the built-in capability to do webcasting."

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Read about Watson Arena's January 18, 2009, dedication.

The competition is open to the public from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Saturday and Sunday. Finals are to be held Sunday afternoon. Admission to all events is free.

All of the U.S. teams, comprising Bowdoin, Carnegie Mellon University, the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Texas at Austin, are expected to participate.

The Northern Bites four-legged team won 2008 U.S. Open held in Pittsburgh, Pa. In 2007, the Northern Bites were the RoboCup world champions in the four-legged league.

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Nao humanoid robots in action in Suzhou, China, during the 2008 RoboCup World Championships.

This year the International RoboCup Committee has switched from the Sony Aibo robot dog to the Nao, a humanoid model made by Aldebaran.

In this year's competition, there will be four robots per team, competing on a 4.4 by 6.8 meter field.

This evolution, which continually brings the rules more in line with "real" soccer, reflects RoboCup's goal as it strives to fulfill its mission statement: "By the year 2050, develop a team of fully autonomous humanoid robots that can win against the human world soccer champion team."

The robots operate with no external control by humans or computers, and are executing programs written entirely by Bowdoin students, who must also calibrate the robots to each new environment — particularly with regard to color vision.

For more information and schedule updates, visit the Northern Bites site.

Tentative Schedule:

Saturday May 2nd (Pool Play)

10:00 AM - UPenn v. UTexas

11:00 AM - CMU v. Bowdoin

(lunch break)

2:00 PM - UTexas v. CMU

3:00 PM - UPenn v. Bowdoin

4:00 PM - Bowdoin v. UTexas

5:00 PM - CMU v. UPenn

Sunday May 3rd (Semis and Finals)

10:00 AM - semis game (teams TBD)

11:00 AM - semis game (teams TBD)

(lunch break)

1:30 PM - 3rd and 4th place finals

2:30 PM - 1st and 2nd place finals


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