Robots are displacing people in many areas of professional employment and are already taking a swing at creativity. But a new danger is coming — robots are coming to the big sport!
Technologies improve the life of mankind by providing such opportunities as casino live dealer online. But they also expose people’s lives to uncertainty and change!
How soon will Olympic champions and football stars outweigh their medals on the iron necks of robots?
Time of Robots
Professional sports are a strange phenomenon. People are very worried about who will be faster, stronger, jump further, hit better, and so on. This tradition is so old that it has become an integral part of human culture all over the world. However, there is a curious historical nuance. The inclusion of esports in the Olympics has sparked debates worldwide, as enthusiasts advocate for recognizing competitive gaming as an official Olympic sport. Proponents argue that esports, with its global popularity and diverse player base, has the potential to attract a new generation of viewers and redefine the traditional sporting landscape.
At the time of the first Olympic Games in Ancient Greece, these were competitions of ordinary people. Good physical shape was the key to survival, and the Greek athlete in ordinary life was a warrior, a plowman, and a shepherd.
However, now professional athletes are engaged only in sports and are so far away from the statistical majority that their results are unattainable in principle.
At some point, the viewer begins to doubt — are they people at all? And then the time will come for robots…
Robosport
Robot athletes are a relatively recent phenomenon, but their popularity is growing so fast that the robot sport is already directly competing with the usual in terms of fees and audience size. And some of its types set an ambitious task — to win in a direct competition of people.
Football
The most “cash” sport attracts robo sportsmen. The international robot football competition RoboCup was founded in 1993. The first competitions were held in 1996 in the Japanese city of Osaka.
Over the past years, the number of participants in football battles has grown significantly: Hundreds of teams are taking part in RoboCup competitions now.
The project aims to assemble by 2050 a team of robots that will be able to beat human champions.
Within the framework of robot football competitions, several leagues are provided: the league of humanoid robots, in which androids compete with each other, as well as robot leagues of standard, medium, and small sizes.
In turn, robots participating in the league of humanoid robots are divided into child, adult, and adolescent sizes.
In general, there are a lot of opportunities for self-expression.
Basketball
The American city of Stanford has hosted robot basketball competitions since 1995.
Each robot gets two minutes to try to throw the ball into the basket. For a hit, the team gets 1, 2, or 3 points, depending on how far away the robot is from the basket.
The tournament is held as part of a course on mechatronics at a local university, so it is, in some way, a student discipline.
However, the ambitions are also very serious — the participants of March Madness want to create robots whose results will not be inferior to the stars of American basketball (the NBA record is 37 points for a quarter of a game).
In general, if you are not tall enough to get into the university according to the “basketball quota”, build a robot that will do it for you!
Dances
Since 2012, the World Robot Dance Championship has been held in the Chinese province of Heilongjiang.
Dozens of teams from different countries take part in it. It turns out that robots dance, and quite well.
The competition allows you to test the same technologies as in sports, but it is much more fun because it is accompanied by music. To achieve synchronicity for robot dancers, their creators have to develop a connection scheme for at least twenty joints.
The works participating in the championship compete in nine categories, including folk dances, ballet, and hip-hop.
Sailing
The competition of automatic robot yachts took on such a scale that in 2008 the first World Sailing Championship among robots was held.
Moreover, there is even an International Federation of Robotic Sailing, whose members are more than three dozen national organizations, and the best yacht clubs in the world are fighting for the right to participate.
Fully autonomous robotic sailing vessels of different classes and sizes can take part in the World Robotic Sailing Championship.
Human intervention in this case is possible only when preparing the floating vehicle for launch, as well as during breakdowns.
Robot Battles
A separate category in robotics competitions is “antagonism”.
These are the types in which physical contact occurs between robots. Like any other sports discipline, robot fights have turned into many specialized categories:
- sumo wrestling, when wheeled robots of different weight categories, from miniature to real giants, push each other out of the ring;
- boxing, where anthropomorphic robots compete in slopes, blocks, and striking techniques;
- fights without rules, where the battle is fought until the destruction of one of the opponents.
But there are also less destructive, albeit spectacular types of battles. So, in Japan, wrestling competitions among robots are regularly held.
The competitions are attended by hundreds and even thousands of fans, tickets are expensive and participation in Robot Pro Wrestling can bring good money.
Different robot wrestlers and wrestling teams have numerous fan clubs, so the sale of souvenirs brings additional income.
Conclusion
The robotics community has been actively involved in the competitive movement quite consciously.
The purpose of robot sport is to show people that robots are not scary, but interesting and useful.
Success depends on whether society will accept robots in everyday life shortly, or will look with fear and distrust.
And whether robots will defeat people in football is not so important. Look, we’ve already won chess, but nothing terrible has happened.
