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Video: Robot World Cup
The FIFA World Cup may come around only once in four years 鈥� but humanoid robots can compete in their own version of the championships, the Robot World Cup, every 12 months. This year鈥檚 event in Bangalore, India, last month comprised eight different events, from penalty kick-offs to non-soccer events such as weightlifting.
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A team from University of Plymouth represented the UK with a robot they鈥檝e been remodelling for the past year. 鈥淓ach year, we completely take apart our robot and build it up into a new design for the next competition,鈥� says Peter Gibbons, a PhD student at the university鈥檚 . 鈥淟ast year, we had a few hardware failures, so we鈥檝e gone for a year of making our system robust.鈥�
This year鈥檚 model has six different motors in each leg. The team has also changed the robot鈥檚 gait by modelling how humans walk, tending to topple forwards when they lose their balance. They opted to keep its upper body lightweight, like a human鈥檚, to help with stability.
Although the robot won the first heat of the sprint event, a broken motor prevented it from competing in the second round, where the team was aiming for world record time. They finished sixth out of 13 teams. Teams from Tamkang University and National Cheng Kung University in Taiwan were the overall champions.
