The armies of the future will be excellent soccer players

[Ghoulish Delight]

RoboCup 2005 has begun!

http://www.robocup.org/
http://www.robocup2005.org/

It's an international competition. The big focus is on the various soccer-playing robots. They also exhibit disaster rescure robots, and run a "junior" competition where younger participants build simpler problem-solving robots. So much fun. It seems to be just starting, so there isn't a whole lot available to see on the websites. The second link has a few photos in the News Room. The first link has a "Photos and clips" link that wasn't working when I tried it.

This story has a teaser video that shows some a glimpse at some of the impressive bots. Although, either goalie technology is way behind, or whoever edited the clips decided a saved goal wasn't interesting enough to watch (meanwhile, I would say that that's the more difficult achievment).