The World Cup isn’t the only game in town: This year’s international RoboCup finals are also getting their kickoff this week in Germany, and even the commentators are of the robotic persuasion. But that's no easy feat: It turns out that programming a play-by-play robot is just as hard as programming a robo-soccer player.
"We have been working on robot soccer for a while, and we have seen the robots autonomously playing each other, but all the other functions around the robots have been done by humans," Manuela Veloso, a computer science professor at Carnegie Mellon University and head of the school's RoboCup teams, told me today. "It occurred to us to try to think about making the commentators and the referees and the coaches be robots, which would be interesting."
Play-callers not only have to keep their eyes on the ball - they also have to take in the big picture, appreciate the merits of the big play and keep their audience informed as well as entertained.
Sony |
| Carnegie Mellon University adapted two Sony Qrio robots like this one to serve as play- by-play commentators for RoboCup matches. |
It's a job that's too big for just one bot, so Veloso's team programmed two mini-humanoid Sony Qrio robots to play different parts during this week's matches in Bremen. Sango is more inclined to explain the rules of the match or offer instruction on the fine points of a good play, while Ami is "more emotional, following the game more closely, making more exciting calls," Veloso said.
Ami, for example, would be more likely to break out in an android adaptation of Telemundo commentator Andres Cantor's signature call - "GOOOOOOAL!"
The call isn't exactly the same, because the robots' synthesized voices aren't capable of sustaining a long "O" the way Cantor can. "Therefore, we had to have the synthesizers repeat the 'L' ... Goal-oal-oal-oal-oal-oal-oal-oal!" Veloso said.
The 2-foot-high (60-centimeter-high) robots receive input from their own electronic eyes as well as from the same game management program that tells the robotic players about the status of the game. They have to translate all that input into an output that gives the flavor of the match, based on a repertoire of responses.
"We want them to follow the game," Veloso said. "If you see them, they don't look like they're not paying attention. They cheer at the right moments, they say the right things."
And if they're ever at a loss for words - for example, if some robot executes an amazing play that isn't in the commentators' playbook - the Carnegie Mellon team can prompt the robots using a system called Puppet Master.
"This is what we call 'sliding autonomy.' It means they are not fully autonomous, but they are not completely controlled by humans," Veloso said. "It's an in-between autonomy."
Perhaps most importantly, the commentators are programmed to interact with each other - which is particularly important, considering that neither robot can take in the full picture of the 13-by-20-foot (4-by-6-meter) playing field by itself. When do you let your sidekick drone on, and when do you interrupt? It's a problem that can challenge even human commentators.
"We spent a lot of time thinking about what to do when one is saying something and the other sees something like a goal," Veloso said.
She said the trickiest part of the job is how to calibrate the robots' commentary to reflect whether the match is a blowout or a nail-biter.
"What if the score is 5-0? What's the excitement of the sixth goal? Not much. ... There's that very sharp threshold between losing and winning, and that's a threshold that the commentators have to be very sensitive to," Veloso said. "It's not just the actual vision, but it's also keeping a memory of the state of the game."
The robots are also programmed to be the mechanical equivalents of a cheerleading squad, pumping their arms to celebrate a goal and doing sideline dances to keep the crowd entertained. In a sense, the success of Sango and Ami will depend on whether they can hold the audience's interest.
"We are competing with the crowd, and it's not clear that the poor little humanoids, who are not more than 60 centimeters tall, will be able to be the big winners," Veloso said.
Sango and Ami will be providing the commentary for a series of matches that pit teams of four-legged robo-dogs against each other, in the June 14-18 time frame. Still more games are planned for two-legged and wheeled machines, as well as virtual-reality bots.
But the 10th annual RoboCup is about much more than soccer. This year's event also offers virtual-reality and real-world workouts for robotic rescue teams, as well as a RoboCup @ Home competition in mundane tasks such as retrieving a soda can from a refrigerator or picking up a newspaper.
In all, 2,500 scientists from about 40 nations are converging on Bremen in northern Germany - not only for the competitions, but also for seminars on the future of robotics and artificial intelligence.
Veloso said the types of problems encountered in getting the robo-commentators to do their thing will eventually carry over to the future world of robotics.
"This is universal to having robots capable of observing their surroundings," she said. "Imagine robots helping out in a nursing home, or in your everyday environment. Imagine robots who help children cross the road. You will have to be able to observe specific events."
Would you ever be able to trust your kids to a robotic traffic guard - or for that matter, a robotic soccer referee? The long-term goal of the RoboCup series is to have a robotic team capable of beating a human team by the year 2050. Is that a realistic goal? For further thoughts on the prospects of robot-vs.-human competition, check out our "Olympics of Tomorrow" interactive - or find out how to survive a robot uprising.
Update for 4:30 p.m. June 13:Check out this video of the robo-commentators (and robo-players) in action, courtesy of WPXI-TV in Pittsburgh.