Lifelike Robots Invade the Toy Market

In June of this year, a team of wheeled robots designed by students from Taiwan's Tamkang University (TKU) faced off against a Korean team in San Francisco. The TKU team slaughtered them, scoring 12 goals in two ten-minute halves versus none for the Koreans.

The victory came at the Federation of International Robot-Soccer Association (FIRA) Cup dreamt up by Professor Kim Jong-hwan of the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology in 1995. The cup's eight events, which include competitions for micro-, intermediate, and humanoid robots, include participants from more than 30 nations every year.

TKU won the title in the RoboSot (intermediate-sized soccer) category. The rules are simple: teams of three robots (one goalie and two forwards) compete on a six-meter by eight-meter field. Once placed on the field, the robots must find and shoot at the opponents' goal on their own.

A robot baby that can converse with its owner; a rabbit whose eyes light up when you receive e-mail; Paro, an electronic baby seal; and Tickle Me Elmo.

Vision is key

How is it that these two robot teams that looked so very similar scored so very differently?

"Sunlight on the field changes its color temperature," explains Liu Chih-cheng, a PhD student in TKU's Department of Electrical Engineering and captain of the TKU wheeled-robot team. "Your opponent's robots can't see the ball when the light reflecting off it falls outside the programmed parameters, and they don't know where to go." Liu says that the wavelength of the light from the mercury vapor lamps used to illuminate their previous game against China's Qingdao University team affected the TKU robots' vision and they scored only one goal. This forced the team to make hurried adjustments to their robots' visual systems after the game.

The TKU robots are 35 centimeters tall, weigh 17 kilograms, and have four independently driven wheels that allow them to nimbly advance, retreat and turn. They also have notebook computers mounted in their midsections and omnidirectional sensors mounted on their heads. These expensive sensors combine a laser with a camera, and enable the robots to identify the ball and decide where to move.

Robot-soccer tournaments use distinctive colors to distinguish between objects on the field: orange for the ball, yellow for the goal, green for the pitch, and black for the robots. This means that the robots' visual systems have to be able to distinguish colors, then use image matching to calculate the position of objects. The winning robots are usually those able to adapt to changes in the lighting to find a rapidly moving ball, accurately choose a direction and strike the ball hard.

The TKU team has now won FIRA's RoboSot cup two years running, and this year took home the more challenging HuroCup trophy for the first time.

A robot baby that can converse with its owner; a rabbit whose eyes light up when you receive e-mail; Paro, an electronic baby seal; and Tickle Me Elmo.

Will they beat a human team?

The HuroCup encompasses seven events: the lift-and-carry, an obstacle run, penalty kicks, a robot dash, basketball, weightlifting, and a marathon. In the lift-and-carry event, the robots have to make their way across uneven terrain while carrying a basket loaded with AA batteries. In the penalty kicks event, the robots take five consecutive penalty shots on goal. In the weightlifting event, the robots raise a lifting bar with three CDs attached to each end. The basketball event tests whether the robots can recognize, then accurately shoot at, a basket. Total points earned in these events determine the cup's winner.

To kick a ball, a humanoid robot must have agile legs. To that end, the TKU robot's legs each have seven independent motors and seven degrees of freedom. The robot also lived up to the team's expectations in the final event, the robot dash, when it set a record of 27 seconds for the forward and backward transit of the 120-centimeter course.

Soccer-playing robots represent a milestone in the integration of robotics and artificial intelligence. The two annual global robot-soccer cups now in existence, FIRA and RoboCup, offer an opportunity to demonstrate the level of development of each participating nation's robotics research.

The RoboCup League was formed by a group of robotics researchers from the US and Japan seeking to realize a very long-term goal: they hope by 2050 to develop robots fast and skilled enough to beat the World Cup champions.

Their goal is absolutely achievable. In 1997, IBM's Deep Blue computer defeated reigning world chess champion Garry Kasparov. Given the rate of advance of artificial intelligence research, the group believes that 50 years is plenty of time to develop a robot soccer team that can defeat the human champions.

The robot competitions taking place on campuses around Taiwan are heated affairs. Participants in August's qualifying tournament for the World Robot Olympiad were required to build a robot that could detect and extinguish a fire. The event was sponsored by the National Science and Technology Museum.

Intelligent toys

We now have the World Robot Olympiad, as well as robot clubs in primary and middle schools. In Taiwan's universities, robot soccer matches are encouraging students in science and technology programs to "play." Collectively, these are turning robots into fantastic educational "toys." Education is in turn becoming a driving force in their commercialization.

One of the best lines of robot toys hit the market in 1998. The result of collaboration between Lego and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Lego MindStorms sparked tremendous interest in Lego robots.

MindStorms' programmable brain, a microcomputer mounted in a Lego brick, is what really sets the toy apart. The kits also contain propulsion systems, structural components and a variety of sensors. Using these parts and traditional Lego blocks, users can unleash their creativity to build robotic insects, earthmovers and remote-controlled vehicles. The interface also allows them to program their robots' movements. Lego releases new versions of its MindStorms kits every year. These are highly recommended by educators and typically sell for upwards of NT$10,000.

But do-it-yourself robot toys aren't the only segment of the market doing well; interest in electronic pets is also running high.

US toy-making giant Mattel sells a toy called Tickle Me Elmo, based on a character from Sesame Street. It mimics human movements, clapping, bowing, rocking, and rolling on the floor laughing when you tickle its red fur. Though the toy has been on sale for a decade, Elmo was a huge hit during last year's Christmas shopping season, selling out in stores across the US.

According to data from the Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI), the global games and toys market is worth approximately US$70 billion. Traditional toys and games account for about US$55 billion of this amount, with electronic toys and games, including robots, accounting for the remainder. The US is the largest market, with annual purchases of approximately US$25 billion, or 36% of the total. Taiwan's market, meanwhile, is worth about NT$20 billion (US$606 million).

Robot soccer players use onboard recognition systems to find the ball, identify the goal and try to score. But when the Taiwanese soccer robots shown here fall over, they have to wait for a human to set them on their feet again, unlike their Japanese counterparts, which can get up on their own.

Chip industry leading the way

Among the characteristics of the toy market are a short product life cycle, a well-defined high season for sales, the need to constantly roll out new products, and a strong emphasis on product safety. The highly competitive games and toys market clearly offers opportunities to robot makers. Does that mean opportunities for Taiwan as well?

"Toys are certainly an area in which Taiwan's robot manufacturers are making their presence felt," says Benjamin Jan, general manager of the Precision Machinery Research and Development Center. "Competing in the toy market requires creativity, reasonable pricing and core technologies." Jan says that Taiwan's advanced chip design technology is world renowned, and that Taiwanese chip designers have a significant presence in the international toy market. In fact, he notes that RoboSapien, Tickle Me Elmo, the Nintendo Wii, and the Sony PS3 all utilize chips from Taiwanese firms--Via Technologies, Winbond, PixArt, and Genesys Logic, respectively.

At last year's Info Month Taipei, the item attracting the most attention wasn't a cellphone handset or a laptop computer. Instead, it was Pleo, a green, AI-driven robot dinosaur developed by the US company Ugobe. Pleo's creator is a part-German, part-Chinese designer named Caleb Chung who worked on the film Jurassic Park before taking a job designing toys for Mattel.

According to Ugobe's website, Pleo is a "life form" based on a Jurassic-era Camarasaurus. Pleo bobs its head and wags its tail while walking, droops them when sad, snores when sleeping and even dreams. Even more amazingly, Pleo can recognize its own kind. Owners need to be careful that their Pleo doesn't pick up any bad habits.

Pleo has seven microprocessor chips, 14 motors, and 38 sensors, including visual, auditory and tactile sensors. Its soft, rubberized body actually feels like that of a living pet. In fact, it is so lifelike that it has stirred buyer interest even before its release. Hong Kong's Jetta Company and Taiwan's Foxconn will reportedly handle the actual manufacturing.

"The problem we have right now is a lack of our own toy brands," says Jan. "And it will take people and resources to develop our own killer applications." Noting that Taiwan is former toy-making giant that has grown into tech-industry powerhouse, he argues that reinvigorating the toy industry and creating business opportunities require that we integrate advanced robotics technologies into our toys.

Robot soccer players use onboard recognition systems to find the ball, identify the goal and try to score. But when the Taiwanese soccer robots shown here fall over, they have to wait for a human to set them on their feet again, unlike their Japanese counterparts, which can get up on their own.

A robot baby that can converse with its owner; a rabbit whose eyes light up when you receive e-mail; Paro, an electronic baby seal; and Tickle Me Elmo.

A robot baby that can converse with its owner; a rabbit whose eyes light up when you receive e-mail; Paro, an electronic baby seal; and Tickle Me Elmo.