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" The World Cup isn&amp;#039;t the only global soccer tournament raging in Germany. In the northern town of Bremen, most soccer players have four feet instead of two, and lines of code trump fancy footwork. Welcome to the world of RoboCup, where teams of robot dogs seek their own glory on a modified, wireless-enabled soccer pitch. The annual five-day event has drawn nearly 350 teams of roboticists and their robots from 40 countries this year. The mission is the promotion of artificial intelligence and robotics research through robot soccer competitions. The ultimate goal is to develop humanoid robots capable of beating the human world soccer champions by 2050. (PM stands on the sidelines at a RoboCup match; Read more.) And this year, as the four-legged AIBOs chase their tails up and down the field, a pair of bipedal, humanoid robots have reached celebrity status at the RoboCup World Championship: Carnegie Mellon University&amp;#039;s (CMU) QRIO commentator &amp;#039;bots Ami and Sango are providing the synthetic play-by-play.  &amp;quot;All the heads turn as we carry the robot to the field,&amp;quot; says Nick Armstrong-Crew, a CMU Ph.D. candidate who helped program the QRIOs. &amp;quot;As soon as it starts to stand up, the cameras come out.&amp;quot; The two-and-a-half-foot-tall pair covered four games Thursday and will cover several more, including the championship matches. They use their electronic vision sensors to track specific colors, in this case the orange ball. By interpreting the direction of the ball, the QRIO commentators can react to the play with their synthesized voices. Each robot watches only one half of the field, but the duo is able to communicate what each sees to the other so that either can comment on the play. And like any good color commentary, they lace their announcements with the occasional joke, halftime dances and celebratory cheers when a goal is scored. But don&amp;#039;t draw up that Telemundo contract just yet. Only one robot can speak at a time\u2014the designers intended this to avoid the robots talking over one another\u2014though one can interrupt the other to comment on an exciting play. Also, a human &amp;quot;referee&amp;quot; must use a controller to inform them of a scored goal or a committed foul and to assist the duo in interpreting a complicated event, such as heightening the importance of a critical tie-breaking goal. Even so, CMU professor Manuela Veloso is pleased. &amp;quot;They did a good job,&amp;quot; says Veloso. &amp;quot;They are doing a better job every time, and the audience enjoys hearing [them].&amp;quot; RoboCup concludes Saturday, when champions in four divisions of competition are crowned\u2014in addition to numerous other awards for achievements in AI and robotics.\u2014Adam Bryant More: Do Robot Players Dream of Synthetic Goals? Dynamic Duo: Carnegie Mellon University commentator &amp;#039;bots Ami and Sango focus on the action. The QRIO robots are calling the play-by-play from the RoboCup World Championship in Germany. Collin McMillen "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.popularmechanics.com/adventure/sports/a728/3065431/>