Special Track: AIBO

Gaming with robots

In recent years some industries like Sony and Philips released interesting robots such as the AIBO dog and iCAT. These robots are designed after animal/human model. They are able to sense the environment by their eyes, ears, touch and even smell. And are able to perform some actions such as running, kicking, showing facial expressions or generate sounds. The robots are so advanced that it possible to emulate human behavior. One of the favorite human activities is playing games. So the ultimate challenge is to design these robots as sophisticated game players. Some researchers envision a soccer team of robots which are able to beat the human World Champion team. At this moment we are far away from the realization of that goal.

Game players interested in AIBO soccer are organized in the AIBO soccer League. Every year teams from different countries take part in the AIBO World Championship. In the course of the years the AIBO soccer made a lot of progress. At start different teams designed AIBO’s, able to perceive a (running) ball, to stop the ball and to kick the ball in the right direction. Last years some teams designed AIBO’s, which were able to keep their position and play together. In the Netherlands players interested in AIBO soccer are organized in the Dutch AIBO soccer team under the heading of DECIS Lab in Delft. DECIS is a research lab focused on distributed decision making, composed of researchers from the University of Amsterdam, Delft, TNO and Thales. In a similar way as the soccer League Philips founded an iCAT community of researchers interested in designing robots as house pets.

During the Game-On 2006, one of the leading conferences on games, a special track will be organized on Gaming with robots. Gamers/ researchers involved in robot gaming are invited to submit a paper for the special track. During the conference a demo will be organized around AIBO soccer. Gamers/researchers in robot gaming are also invited to give a demonstration on robot gaming.

drs.dr. L.J.M. Rothkrantz
Delft, July 2006