They are possibly the world's most unusual soccer players - teams of four-legged robots programmed to react spontaneously to their environment... and kick a few goals as well.
Pitting their artificial intelligence against universities around the world, Australian challengers fought their way to second-place in the semi-finals of the RoboCup 99 championship, held in Stockholm last week.
While the players themselves were based on Sony's dog-like toy the Aibo, the Australian team's soccer skills were programmed by members of the University of New South Wales.
The artificial intelligence group led by Dr Graham Mann included under graduates Mike Lawther and John Dalgleish, technical manager Phil Preston and supervisor Professor Claude Zammit.
Despite the appearance of fun and games, robotics is still a serious and difficult field of research, according to UNSW's Dr Graham Mann, who has worked on a few robots of his own.
Mann has developed a prototype of a robot that can clean a kitchen floor. It's not a tribute to the Jetsons, Mann says he's just interested "in robots pulling their weight around the place".
"I'm interested Small, cheap, simple robots that are easy to use. I'm a believer in household automation," Mann told PC Week.
"Rather than build intelligence into each appliance, houses of the future will have objects without much intelligence but with the ability to communicate, perhaps via infra red, with a central intelligence."
The kitchen robot, called Curi-5, uses an unusual system of odour marking to find its way.
"The biggest problem for household robots is navigation. There are a couple of companies in the US, and one in the UK, that are working on robotic lawnmowers, that use cables in the ground and sensors to detect the cables in the lawn. Now in the kitchen, you can't dig up the floor to place cables. So this idea equips a robot with a sense of smell, to tell where it has cleaned and where it hasn't been before."
While Mann is perfecting the technology for his household robot, he fears it may never takes its place in Australian homes.
"I would like to get Curi-5 out into the community. We (in Australia) publicly fund projects and then give them away. Getting (the robot) out is a problem that may become more than I can accomplish as a scientist. I have had friends try for many years to turn themselves into businessmen, and learn development, licensing and manufacturing."
The Robo-soccer team, Curi-5 and other robots will be on public display at the UNSW Open Day on September 4.
