The referees at the upcoming Club World Cup in Japan will likely be taking a little less flack from the fans if a ball manages to come dangerously close to slipping into the net, as FIFA is deploying a type of "goal-line" technology that more precisely indicates whether debatable shots really crossed the line. At the heart of the system are four sensors that are placed around the goal and a single microchip within the so-called smart-ball; if the ball does indeed cross over the goal line, an encrypted message is instantly beamed out to a referee's watch, leaving no doubt as to whether or not a point should be awarded. Apparently, the system will be widely used at the 2010 World Cup if testing proves successful, but unfortunately, this same technology can't be used to embarrass the multitude of players who will inevitably take a dive in order to draw a card.

[Via AFP / Yahoo, image courtesy of FIFA]

Sure, that crazy idea of soccer bots besting the human World Cup champs by 2050 will be plenty fun 44 years from now, but how about a bit of entertainment in the here and now? Robo-One has just the thing with their new Robot Battle Ball competition, which mixes the tried and true dynamics of soccer, but throws out all the lame rules like "no hands" and "no head-butting." The result is a rather entertaining game, and though the contestants are currently remote-controlled, we're sure these little bots will figure out the necessary maliciousness on their own before long. So peep the read link, watch the related video of Robot Battle Ball action and get ready for the next big thing in sports. At least until NFL starts back up again. Oh wait, nevermind.

It seems that not all of our robot friends are lucky enough to be able to kick back and play a bit of soccer of their own in Germany this month. No, some are stuck with the lowly task of protecting us humans, with eleven Linux-based robots from Robowatch Technologies providing both indoor and outdoor surveillance at Berlin's Olympic Stadium every night until the final World Cup game on July 9th. The outdoor robots, known as ORFO, use GPS to patrol an area up to two kilometers away from the control center and pack thermal cameras able to detect intruders by their body heat. Alas, it appears they are unarmed -- which is probably for the best, you know, in the grand scheme of things. The indoor robots, dubbed MORSO, are deployed throughout the stadium, equipped with video cameras, radar sensors, temperature gauges, and infrared scanners able to detect movement or any changes to the stadium. The robots also use 3G technology to communicate with the control center and, presumably, to watch some TV on their breaks.

Human footballers aren't the only ones in Germany getting a little bit of lovin' this time of year. More than 400 teams from 36 countries have shown up for the annual RoboCup, which pits robot against robot in soccer matches across 11 leagues. The goal, as always, is to have a humanoid robot team capable of beating the human World Cup champs in 2050, but right now a lot of the robots are just happy to stand up. Current favorites in the humanoid competition is a team from Japan, while the returning champs from Germany are expected to do well in the four-legged league. Live commentary for some matches will be provided by Sango and Ami, two robots from Carnegie Mellon who explain rules, analyze fouls and call out the goals with their very own "personalities." No word if former star RoboVie-V will be making an appearance among the robot horde, but the real question is: can they dance like Peter Crouch?

With the FIFA World Cup set for kickoff at 11:55AM EST today, most of us Americans are still sitting around scratching our heads trying to figure out how to pronounce Pelé, and whether we'd be offending anybody if we just called football "soccer" so things are less confusing. Turns out we are very alone in this predicament, since in 2002 the World Cup nabbed a total TV viewership of 29 billion, with 1.1 billion people viewing Brazil's defeat of Germany in the finale. The tournament takes place among 32 teams over the course of a month, and is being hosted by Germany this time around -- who have built or retrofitted 12 stadiums to host the 64 matches. Suffice it to say that this is the biggest sporting event in the world, making our American football's Super Bowl look quite minuscule by comparison. And what better way to celebrate this month of sporting excess than to round up all the tech it entails? If you need a bit more convincing, we recommend Larry Dobrow's "The Ignorant American's Guide to the World Cup," and if that doesn't help, might we remind you of the decent chance of celebratory and/or irate crazed-fan rioting -- brought to you live in HD?

While there are a myriad of ways to actually receive live TV of the matches all over the world, the main source for all this video is a team-up of HBS and Deutsche Telekom's T-Systems Media&Broadcast. HBS (Host Broadcast Services) is a dedicated organization set specifically to produce TV and radio coverage of the tournament, and they're all set with a staff of 2,000 to produce live 16:9, SD, PAL, and HDTV coverage from all 12 stadiums. The 1080i/50 MPEG-2 signals alone run at 1,485Mbps, with a minimum of 20 HDTV cameras running for each match. That's where T-Systems Media&Broadcast steps in: pumping out all that data. They'll be on the scene with ISDN, Ethernet, WiFi, DSL, EDGE, UMTS and HSDPA to shoot HBS signals to the International Broadcast Centre master control in Munich, and to manage all the other data from the 15,000 or so press people on the scene. From the IBC, the video and audio "pool feed" gets shipped off to more than 180 broadcasters worldwide. You think we're done? Not a chance, click on!

With an incredible demand for portable live TV about to hit the world thanks to next week's launch of the FIFA World Cup, onTimetek has figured out a clever way to feed video to the masses using incomplete T-DMB infrastructure and without breaking anybody's bandwidth bill. Their new DMBO device is just a regular USB T-DMB receiver, but it mixes with the DMBO software to provide live video to others via P2P. It seems the system is mainly designed to fill in the gaps for those with poor reception, but we could really go for something like this broadcasting to the rest of the world -- we were always dreamers.

So you've got your FIFA World Cup Xbox 360 and HDTV read to go but, well, you’re still just not feelin’ that World Cup fever? How ‘bout trying on a new, limited edition Toshiba Dynabook 2006 FIFA Word Cup laptop? This pup starts with a Dynabook TX base (1.6GHz Core Duo, 15.4-inch WXGA LCD, 80GB disk, 512MB RAM, and Harman & Kardon speakers), lays on a healthy slathering of gold paint inscribed with the dates and countries of previous World Cup hosts/winners, loads-up a multitude of soccertastic themes, and then slaps on a serial plate just in case your silicon slab gets mixed-in with one of the other 600 units produced. Now the ol' mercury's rising, eh? Ok, maybe not. Still, they'll be shipping May 26 for right around $1700 -- just in time for some hard posing at the pub or heaving onto the pitch should the “Hand-of-God” make its return.

[Thanks, Roygbiv]