JEDDAH, 23 May 2007 — The National Talent Training Center in the Eastern Province is organizing its first Kingdom Junior RoboCup Championship tomorrow at the Dhahran Exhibition Center on the Dammam-Alkhobar Coastal Road from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.
The King Abdul Aziz and his Companions Foundation for the Gifted is sponsoring the event. It has attracted 24 teams, including two teams of women, in two age-specific leagues (Under 14 and Under 18) from across the Kingdom. The champions from each league will qualify to participate in the RoboCup 2007 in Atlanta, US, in July. The event in Dammam tomorrow includes eight teams from Jeddah, four from Riyadh and 12 from the Eastern Province.
RoboCup is an international research and education initiative aiming at fostering artificial intelligence and robotics. The first RoboCup was held in 1997 in Japan, followed by France, Sweden, Australia, US, Japan, Portugal, Germany, and now back in the US. In 2002 the championship started a competition of bipedal robots constructed and programmed by different teams who play football against each other.
Each team designs and builds robots from kits and programs and installs the artificial intelligence used by the humanoid machines to complete a two-point football match on a special table. The table has a white-to-black gradient on top that is used by the machines to determine their position on the playing field. When the referee blows the whistle, the robots are let loose to compete on their own.
National Talent Training Center founder Saeed Atef Saeed, a Cornell University engineer who works for Saudi Aramco, said the center is trying to promote this competition in Saudi schools as an opportunity for students to explore engineering as a possible career path. According to Saeed, one girls’ school, Al-Saad Schools for Girls in Alkhobar, has been among the schools that have welcomed the idea.
“From this championship, we aim at two things,” said Saeed, who was on the winning team from Cornell at the 2000 World Cup of Robotic Soccer in Melbourne. “First, to give students a reason to learn and to apply what they are learning in schools. Second, to show them how much fun science and engineering can be.”
Saeed said that the program is a way for students to have a chance to see if engineering is in their hearts and minds.
“When they indulge themselves in events like this championship they are be able to experience what they have passion for and look forward to it, or look for something else,” he said. “You have to be a bit imaginative to be able to build such a thing.”
The teams of young Saudis have been working for the past couple of months and meeting almost weekly with RoboCup Junior Project Manager Husam Madani.
“Despite the fact that they will compete against each other in the end, they are helping each other now,” said Madani. “And this is what we encourage.”
Weekly sessions among the students have also been held in Riyadh and in Jeddah at the so-called “RoboCafe” at the Jeddah Science and Innovation Club.
Entry to view the competition is free of charge and attendance of families is encouraged. For further information, visit www.talentscenter.com/robocup/ and www.robocup-us.org.
