The little striker wearing a crescent moon and star jersey lines up his penalty and kicks right, netting his goal as the goalkeeper dives the wrong way and hits the ground yelping in pain.
Both players are teammates practicing to represent Pakistan in a major world soccer tournament. However, unlike their low-ranked flesh-and-blood counterparts, these are advanced robots whose programmers are set to compete against students from the world’s top universities as they look to showcase what their country can do in the world of artificial intelligence.
Students at Pakistan’s National University of Science and Technology (NUST) this year sent a team for the first time to the annual RoboCup, an event featuring 32 universities held in Leipzig, Germany, from Monday to tomorrow.
The six machines are Nao humanoid robots purchased from France’s Aldebaran Robotics at a cost of roughly US$17,000.
It is in fact the third year that NUST, Pakistan’s premier engineering institute, has qualified for the prestigious cup. However, a lack of travel funds has meant their dream of representing their country on the world stage had to be placed on hold — until now.
“Our dream came true this year when the university managed to allocate 1.5 million rupees [US$22,325] for the team’s travel to Germany,” Yasar Ayaz, head of the university’s Department of Robotics and Artificial Intelligence, told reporters.
The amount was enough only for three students instead of all 10 involved in the project to travel to Germany and participate in the event, but the university was hoping to close the gap with funding from sponsors.
“We are not disheartened... Something is better than nothing,” Ayaz said.
The first robot soccer league was started in 1993 by a group of Japanese researchers and named the Robot J-League, after the Japanese professional league.
Following a surge of outside interest, the initiative was extended into an international project and the Robot World Cup Initiative, or RoboCup, was conceived.
The first edition was held in Osaka in 1996. Its stated aims were: “By the middle of the 21st century, a team of fully autonomous humanoid robot soccer players shall win a soccer game, complying with the official rules of FIFA, against the winner of the most recent World Cup.”
However, for the time being that goal appears a long way off.
Students tap away at their laptops in their university lab, programming their code. Zain Murtaza, who leads the 10-member team, sets up the cute robots on their 2.74m by 1.83m pitch, and the action begins.
Each robot has two cameras on their faces guiding their movements.
“The cameras take pictures and feed them to the computers installed inside, which help them decide about their movements and recognize movements of the other players,” Ayaz said.
They walk around the field with short staccato movements, pulling their legs back like a golfer lifts his club before unleashing an ungainly kick that sends the plastic orange ball rolling along the floor.
Mishaps and tumbles are frequent, and the process makes for awkward viewing. Humans are allowed to make minor interventions, but the robots’ movements are entirely their own, with results hinging on how cleverly the machines are programmed to carry out their roles.
The work is a labor of love for the Pakistan team.
“This is a whole new world... I want to teach robotics to students and to tell them how interesting it is to interact with the robots,” said Murtaza, who has completed his master’s degree in the subject and has plans to complete a doctorate.
“These are my babies,” he added.
Pakistan’s progress in the field of artificial intelligence mirrors its advancement in the information technology sector, where the South Asian giant of 200 million people is considered a mid-tier player — particularly for software outsourcing.
Cheap labor, a relatively well-educated middle class that speaks English and access to markets in North America helped exports grow to US$2.2 billion in fiscal 2014.
According to Ayaz, advancements in artificial intelligence could also prove valuable to Pakistan’s small manufacturing base, in addition to being the next major area of scientific research.
Earlier this month, Internet giant Google announced it was setting up a dedicated artificial intelligence research group to focus on machine learning — a field of computer science that gives computers the ability to learn without being explicitly programmed.
Elsewhere, automakers like Honda Motor Co Ltd are devoting resources to develop autonomous driving technologies.
Computing is also a field where increasing numbers of Pakistani women, who have traditionally steered clear of science and technology jobs, see a future for themselves.
“There are a lot of prospects for us to excel in the field of robotics as we pursue higher studies in this subject,” said Asma Ashfaq, one of four female members of the 10-member team.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day