Pakistan roboteers hunt global soccer glory

Pakistani students and team members of robotics and intelligence systems engineering programme their robot football players at the engineering department of the National University of Science and Technology in Islamabad. (Photo: AFP)

The little striker wearing a crescent moon and star jersey lines up his penalty and kicks right, netting his goal as the keeper dives the wrong way and hits the ground yelping in pain.

Both players are teammates practising to represent Pakistan in a major world football tournament.

Unlike their low-ranked flesh-and-blood counterparts, however, 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) will in 2016 for the first time send a team to the annual RoboCup, an event featuring 32 universities that will be held in Leipzig, Germany from June 27 to July 4.

The six machines are NAO humanoid robots purchased from France’s Aldebaran Robotics at a cost of roughly $17,000.

It is in fact the third year that NUST, Pakistan’s premier engineering institute, has qualified for the prestigious cup.

But 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 ($14,336) for the team’s travel to Germany,” Dr Yasar Ayaz, head of the department of robotics and artificial intelligence said.

The amount is enough only for three students instead of all 10 involved in the project to travel to Germany and participate in the event, and the university is still hoping to close the gap with funding from sponsors.

“We are not disheartened... something is better than nothing,” Dr Ayaz said.

The first robot football 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 a international project and the Robot World Cup Initiative, or “RoboCup”, was conceived.

The first edition was held in Osaka in 1996. Its stated aims: “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.”

For the time being, however, 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 ten-member team, sets up the cute robots on their nine-by-six feet pitch, and the action begins.