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Well, as you may know the first weekend of the new Premier League football season has just gone, and no doubt there will be just as many people deliriously happy that they can follow their chosen team through the season ahead as there will be gnashing their in teeth in frustration that it’s the start of another 9 months of non-stop football.

“That’s all well and good,” I hear you say, “but what has football got to do with Gadgets?” Well, I’m glad you asked me that! During the summer while various players were off on their holidays reclining on a sunny beach somewhere, a group of robot programmers were getting together in Graz, Austria for the ‘Robot Soccer World Cup‘. This yearly event gathers programmers from all over the world as they compete in various different categories such as quadruped, and humanoid robots. The aim is to develop autonomous soccer robots with the intention of promoting research and education in the field of artificial intelligence. The overall goal of the project is:

“By mid-21st century, a team of fully autonomous humanoid robot soccer players shall win the soccer game, complying with the official rule of the FIFA, against the winner of the most recent World Cup.”

As you can see by watching the video below which is the second half of the semi-final in the Humanoid League Kidsize category they have some way to go before they can compete effectively with a team of professional footballers, it is stated that a lot of progress has been made even just over the last few years, so maybe the 2050 (ish) deadline isn’t looking so far off after all. Until these robots start behaving like ‘real’ footballers crashing their cars and dating glamorous women I just don’t think that they are in any danger of replacing their human counterparts in the public consciousness.