Robocup 2012 KidSize Summary video

BotSport TV has just posted a great summary video (below)of the 2012 RoboCup “KidSize” (30-60cm) humanoid robot soccer tournament that took place in Mexico City last June.  This is a great competition in which fully autonomous RoboOne-sized robots compete in a standard (if somewhat miniaturized) game of soccer.

It’s great to see how far humanoid robotics have come — doing a task like this autonomously would have been almost unthinkable five or ten years ago.  On the other hand, you can see that there is still plenty of room for improvement, especially in dynamic stability; it’s still quite common for the bots to fall down at the slightest (or no) provocation.

Hats off to all the competitors, and especially to the 2012 (and 2011!) champions, Team DARwin from USA!

[Thanks to Robots-Dreams for the tip.]