Remember how RoboCup keeps saying that they’ll have a team of fully autonomous humanoids ready to take on
Brazil
Italy
Spain (or whoever) by 2050? RoMeLa’s CHARLI could be the progenitor of those eventual champions, as it’ll be competing in the humanoid adult class at RoboCup 2011. Adult class means that CHARLI is more or less the size of a person; it’s 4 foot 7 which I think is slightly taller than Diego Maradona.
Also heading to RoboCup 2011 from RoMeLa is Team DARwIn and their (slightly smaller) autonomous humanoids:
Not bad, I’d say, and I especially liked those two what I’m going to assume were deliberate fake-outs at the end there. You had me fooled, you tricky little robot you!
[ RoboCup @ RoMeLa ]
Evan Ackerman is a senior editor at IEEE Spectrum. Since 2007, he has written over 6,000 articles on robotics and technology. He has a degree in Martian geology and is excellent at playing bagpipes.