More guest links
June 23rd, 2006
I didn’t actually mean it when I said “keep them coming”…
- Adam chips in with this piece on the Robot World Cup. Via a cunningly simple move of PR genius, this coincides with the real deal, in Germany. Results indicate that the Ozzie Nubots won the 4-legged category (not quite sticking to that soccer metaphor, then), and Team Osaka kid-size bagged the humanoid title.
The organisers of the tournament hope that in 2050 the winners of the RoboCup will be able to beat the human World Cup champions.
Not sure about that, but I’m looking forward to seeing droids surrounding the refbot, and getting sent off for malformed binary offside appeal squirts.
- Continuing the wack sports theme, Roberto gives us the heads-up on Chessboxing:
Participants win by way of knockout, checkmate, referee’s decision, or if his opponent exceeds the allotted total of 12 minutes for an entire match on the chessboard. Those are the basics, but they do little to answer the overriding question: Why?
- Not put off by comparisons with bench-bound Czech strikers, Stef maintains his dignity with this link to RepilieeQ2, a freakily realistic Japanese android. He rightly instructs us to watch the video, but it’s also worthwhile for reminding us of the concept of the uncanny valley: According to the slightly mangled Japlish:
Uncanny valley corresponds to the state that androids imperfectly resemble humans and look like moving corpse. People will like them better if they look either more like humans or less like humans.
Thanks guys, no really, do keep them coming.