DARwIn will be America's first humanoid RoboCup competitor
By Evan Blass 
posted Mar 16th 2007 7:14AM
posted Mar 16th 2007 7:14AM
In a fitting tribute to the pioneering scientist after whom it was named, Virginia Tech's Dynamic Anthropomorphic Robot with Intelligence (DARwIn) has finally "evolved" enough (it's now on the fourth iteration, DARwIn IIb) to compete in the traditional Japanese sport of robot soccer. The VT team -- composed of striker DARwIn IIa and goalie DARwIn I -- will reportedly be the first US competitors in the humanoid division of the popular RoboCup tournament, whose 2007 finals are actually being held right here on American soil in Atlanta. DIIa, the more sophisticated of the Robotics & Mechanisms Laboratory's (RoMeLa's) two bots, is built around a LabVIEW-powered 1.4GHz Pentium M with 1GB of RAM, 256KB of flash memory, 23 total actuators, a pair of FireWire cameras, and a gyroscope -- clearly the delicate head-mounted cam was designed before the head-butting ugliness of World Cup 2006. Keep reading to check out a vid of big D in action -- as well as tumbling over -- and then hit up the Read link for more pics, specs, and action-packed soccerbot clips. 
I hope all the little ones gang up on him.
VT Alumni here!
w00t
Go Hokies!!
how about that basketball team eh?
All that programming and expense, and it doesn't even raise it's arms when it scores? That would have gotten a lot more sponsormoney.
Still some work to do.
Seriously? I think it's cute. Let the guy behind the monitor in the back sow him a t-shirt when he's not busy.
Combine his vision processing with ASIMO's running and battery life and we have a winner.
Real nice, nice to see a School from here in the US compete in something that isn't already dominated by us. Best of luck to them and their group.
DARwIn FTW!
Go USA!
Now we've got a shot at the world cup. Kiss our shiny metal asses, Brazil and France!
I for one welcome our soccer playing robot overlords.
Team America, F**k Yeah!
Tech pride! :D
Every one involved with this project deserves a huge pat on the back, and many, many endorsements. DARwin IIb is simply amazing. But why doesn't he(big assumption there)have more computing power? Why not load all ya can? Also, if possible, how does DARwin IIb balance?
VT, Recently you have shown great courage and strength to the world, now, you have shown great enginerring CAN come from the US...YOU GUYS ROCK!!!
PS, excuse my engineering ingnorance that is shown by my questions / comments; I'm so amazed by this accomplishment.