RoboCup 2008

Deirdre — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 15:37:04 GMT

Today, I got the following letter about RoboCup 2008 from Dr. Hong, the Assistant Professor of the Mechanical Engineering Department and Director of Robotics & Mechanisms Laboratory (RoMeLa) at Virgina Tech.

Dear friends of team VT DARwIn;

Thank you for your constant interest and support for team VT DARwIn for RoboCup 2008. We are the autonomous robot soccer team from Virginia Tech, representing the United States in the International RoboCup 2008 Humanoid league, and we are in Suzhou, China now for the competition. More than 440 teams from 35 countries are participating in this year's competition, which makes it the largest in the game's history.

13 undergraduate students and 2 graduate students are on this year's team, with support from many others including students from RoMeLa (Robotics & Mechanisms Laboratory) and engineers from TORC Technologies who have lead team VictorTango for the DARPA Urban Challenge to an impressive third place last year. We hope to keep the spirit alive by wining the RoboCup cahpionship this year. Our newest DARwIn III series humanoid robots are faster, stronger, and much much more smarter than ever, and we believe that they will perform well with impressive results at the competition this week!

* Please do check our our brand new team web site to see the exciting work we have been doing for the past year, and meet our newest DARwIn III series humanoid robots!

* We will be posting our daily blogs from Suzhou, China (July 15-20) to report on our exciting tournaments at RoboCup 2008. Expect to see video clips and high resolution photos of the action and breaking news to bring you the sights and sounds right from the competition floor!

The team would like to thank our generous sponsors; Philip Morris and SAIC as major sponsors, and National Instruments, VaCAS, Maxon Motors, TORC Technologies, National Science Foundation, and Dr. Pat Artis for their generous support in many ways.

Cheer for us! Let the games begin!

Go! VT DARwIn! Go!

Dennis

Faculty Advisor for TEAM VT DARwIn.

Additionally, I checked out the blog and found this great video. Enjoy!

Building A Robotic Beckham

Deirdre — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 19:00:59 GMT

LabVIEW and Apple Technology at Virginia Tech

Apple just released this case study titled, "[Building A Robotic Beckham: LabVIEW and Apple Technology at Virginia Tech|http://www.apple.com/science/profiles/romela/]."

This document shows how students at RoMeLa, the Robotics and Mechanisms Laboratory at Virginia Tech, use Macintosh systems and National Instruments LabVIEW to turn out robotic creations that think and move by themselves.

Specifically, Apple showcaes DARwIn, the Dynamic Anthropomorphic Robot with Intelligence. He is humanoid, autonomous, and made of precision-machined aluminum. DARWin is only three years old, but moves and thinks independently. He comes in two versions, 16 and 24 inches tall, and is currently training to be a soccer player. He competed in the 2007 RoboCup competitions at Atlanta, Georgia, where teams from around the world put autonomous soccer-playing robots through their paces.

You can also see DARwin in action in this YouTube video.

FIRST Community Spotlights

RoboCup 2008

Building A Robotic Beckham