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 By
Freydoun Taslimi
A
team from a developing
country with no previous
experience participates for the first time and becomes the world
champion in Robotics.
The little girl couldn’t have been more than 7 years old. Standing
between two tables covered with a pile of parts, her small hands
were searching for the pieces to complete her small robot. I turned
to my wife and said "how are countries like Iran going to catch
up with this country when this is the type of facility they offer
their young kids?" This was Robocup 2001, a robotics contest-taking
place at the Seattle convention center. The facility with several
hundred thousand square feet of space had become home to hundreds
of young visionaries from over 23 countries participating in various
leagues.
In 1993 Professor Kitano from Japan came up with the concept of
soccer-playing robot, two years later in 1995 he organized the first
International conference and soccer games with the ultimate aim
of creating a squad of mechanical players that can take on, and
beat, the best human teams, by 2050.
In July 1997, the first official conference and game were held in
Nagoya, Japan - followed by Paris, Stockholm, Melbourne and Seattle.
Today, more than 3,000 researchers from 35 countries and regions
are participating in various projects such as international games,
conferences, research and educational programs.
One of the members of the U.S. team in the first contest in 1997
happened to be an Iranian studying at UCLA. After his team won first
place, Dr. Jafar Iman Adibi packed up a few papers and books and
went back to Iran for a summer vacation. While there, he contacted
a few universities to see if any would be interested in starting
a Robocup team. Sharif University took up the challenge and under
the tutelage of Dr. Jamzad embarked on building a Robot to participate
in the 1999 Robocup contest in Stockholm.
The first time I heard about Iran’s participation was from
Dr. Eddalat the founder of the Science and Arts foundation. He could
hardly contain his excitement. "Fereydoun, one of my colleagues
at Imperial College that attended the contest, could not believe
that a team from a developing country with no background in Artificial
Intelligence could participate for the first time, and win the world
championship in the mid-size league," he said. Here I was,
at the Robocup 2001 contest with 8 teams that qualified but many
could not attend because of financial and visa problems.
I was anxious to meet the teams from Iran. I started scanning the
contest hall to see if I could see any Iranian-looking person. You
could hardly miss Miss Zaheri, the only girl participating in the
soccer simulation contest, dressed in the uniform of Islamic Republic
of Iran. She was sitting at a station talking to a few others that
seemed to be the team members from Iran. My wife and I walked over
to introduce ourselves. I could tell they were somewhat surprised
to find Iranians who had an interest in their efforts.
One of the leaders was on the cell phone to the programming team
in Iran reporting last minute problems with the soccer simulation.
Dr. Habibi explained that in Iran their new program had beaten last
year’s champion. However, when they tried their software using
the fast computers at the contest, it did not fair as well. The
team was working feverishly to optimize the program.
The atmosphere at the two competition halls was surreal. In one
corner the Sony 4 legged robots called Aibo, were trying to score
a goal by pushing the ball with their heads. In the other corner,
a preliminary game was taking place between a German and Japanese
team in mid-size robots. In the preparation area, perhaps, twenty
or thirty hopeful students were working on their creations making
last-minute programming changes. An area was dedicated to over a
dozen rudimentary robots with "proximity detectors," which
allowed visitors to interact with them. The strangest Robot (other
than the automatic window washer) was an odd looking contraption
in the form of ten to twenty hinged crescents that would respond
to the environment by changing shape. These were all part of the
general exhibition area where both companies and individuals were
showing off their creations.
Walking through the exhibits reminded me of my own Robot building
days. In the early 1980’s, hobby and kit manufacturer Heathkit
Corporation had just announced a new educational Robot called Hero
I. At the first news of its availability I ordered one and could
not wait until the shipment arrived in a huge box. That day I decided
to take off from work. I laid thousands of parts and sensors, pc
boards, and housing on several tables and started the assembly.
One week (and several sleepless nights) later, I had the two-foot
tall, one-armed Robot running. The following Monday, I had the Hero,
I programmed, to greet visitors in our reception area and shake
its arm in the air at the sight of a moving person. Later when my
interest had waned, I programmed the Robot to be a burglar alarm
for guard duty in my house. It would start screaming at the slightest
detection of motion. Finally, I had to retire the robot to the basement
after an elusive squirrel got into my house and would constantly
trigger Hero I into raving and ranting.
The next day the Iranian team was facing Italy in the small-size
robot league. I had missed the Iranian mid-size game but was determined
not to miss this one too. I charged up the battery on my video camera
and started scouting the best position for my shots. I noticed our
team had three robots while the opponents had five. Mehran Motamed,
one of the team members standing next to me with a camera in hand
explained that three of the robots, including the spare had failed
and they did not have the parts to fix them. The game started with
the whistle of the referee, and each side activated their Robots
simultaneously. These are not remote controlled devices. Each robot
communicates with a server via a wireless connection. The actual
algorithm resides in the server and it also allows regular communication
between the players. A camera mounted by each team at the top of
a 10' by 8' playing table was used to locate all the players.
If you expect a fast-paced game of players running around with all
types of neat maneuvers, forget it. At times it seemed like the
players spent more time thinking about the game than playing it.
I asked Mehran why our goalie seemed to act goofy and on two occasions
actually pushed the ball into our own goal. He explained that the
robotic goalie was actually a regular player.
The "real" goalie had broken down. I said, "I guess
that’s a spare-parts problem again?" He said, "yes."
When the Iranian robots moved, they seemed to move fairly fast and
somewhat coordinated. But their clear talent was kicking the ball.
It was as if they were trying to shoot it over the top of all the
other players towards the goal. In fact, after a while the entire
crowd, including the Italian team cheered when our Robots kicked
the ball. I asked Mehran why our Robots always tried to do a curve
kick? He said that since they could not find the right solenoids
in Iran, they ended up using a compressed air mechanism, which resulted
in curved kicks.
Afterwards Dr Hababi, the leader for the simulation team, showed
me the sophisticated camera the Italians had used to look down on
the playing field. It cost $10,000. The Iranian, team on the other
hand, had a camera that only cost a few hundred dollars with low
resolution and no RGB output making it difficult to differentiate
between the players. I also discovered the reason our robot players
sometimes acted a bit strange was due to noise interference in data
transmission - another result of not having access to the appropriate
components.
Although we lost the game 6-0, I felt proud of our team. With all
the limitations the team had to deal with, to be able to advance
this far was a great accomplishment. In addition, a few months earlier,
it had come to our attention at the Science and Arts Foundation
that some teams and many team members had financial difficulties
that might prevent them from attending the competition. The SAF
asked some Iranian expatriates to help with this cause. This call
was enthusiastically answered and raised over $22,000 that covered
the expense for the teams (other than Sharif University) and the
purchase of close to 100 books in Artificial intelligence and Robotics
that were donated to Sharif University.
Over the next few days our teams faired much better. The best engineering
paper award (from among 83 submitted) went to Sharif University
of Technology. The Arian Team from Sharif University won the world
championship in the Rescue Simulation League. The Arvand team became
world champion in coach simulation. Allameh Helli High School in
Tehran, the only high school team participating, came in third-place
beating teams from Germany and Canada.
And finally in search and rescue Robot League, the Sharif team was
recognized as the best team and took the best working robot award.
We had to leave by the afternoon of Wednesday before the final round
of the Search and Rescue contest. That morning, Dr Jahangir, the
team leader took my wife and me to show off his creation the Search
and Rescue Robot. Two of the students were hack-sawing one of the
track wheels while another was changing a motor that had been destroyed
overnight while testing. Afterward, he had a test run where everything
seemed to go wrong. He turned to me and said, "Fereydoun, all
we need is an hour and we will get it running perfect."
He took me into the hall and while pointing at the competitors,
said "All these folks buy their robots and then concentrate
on the programming. Since we cannot afford it, we have to build
everything from scratch. This means we have to work ten times harder."
We had the impression that they had little chance to win, although
Dr. Jahangir seemed to be full of confidence. The fact that they
beat four teams from the U.S. and one team from England was an outstanding
accomplishment.
We left Seattle with mixed feelings. On one hand, we were saddened
by the stories of lack of facilities and parts, and the fact that
some had come to Seattle not knowing if they would have a place
to stay or have the money to pay for living expenses. On the other
hand, Iran was the only team from a developing country, and their
accomplishments were outstanding. Best of all, many Iranians had
cared enough to step forward to help and support our teams.
On the way back home from Atlanta Airport, my wife asked me if I
were going to get our Robot Hero I running again. Years of neglect
had destroyed the batteries and some of the connectors had come
off. The next day when I was taking my garment bag to place it into
storage in the basement, I passed by the Heathkit Robot standing
against the wall. For
a moment I paused, thinking if I should make an attempt to revive
it, but I felt that I had already found my heroes.
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