Are AI robots the future of sports? These UT students think so

Austin (KXAN) — Inside the winding halls of the University of Texas' computer science department, knee-high robots dribble a miniature soccer ball across a field of turf. Their only goal is to score goals, each one advancing the field of AI robotics.

Last month, a joint team of students from UT and the University of Wisconsin-Madison took home a victory at the RoboCup Home competition held in the Netherlands.

Josh Kelle, a UT graduate on the team, said this portion of the competition puts international teams of robots against one another in a soccer match.

Kelle said the robots have cameras in their eyes with sensors programed to track the soccer ball. The robots act entirely on their own, walking and kicking the ball, picking themselves up if they fall down and using different skills to make goals.

Kelle said the competition is also a chance to troubleshoot and fix problems they wouldn't have seen outside a competitive setting.

"When we're there, we notice a lot of problems that pop up that don't pop up in our lab. So we spend the whole day trying to improve the robots and get them to play even better," Kelle said.

Another student also advanced in the General Purpose Service Robots portion of the competition. This part focuses on how well robots listen and execute verbal requests.

UT Computer Science Professor Peter Stone teaches and leads the Texas portion of the team.

He said the research done today is laying the foundation for life-sized advancements in AI robotics.

"There's been this history of AI programs competing against the very best humans at something, but it's never been at a task that's as complex in the real world as as soccer. That's what we imagined," Stone said.

Kelle said the field of AI is indeed moving at a lighting-fast pace. He said someday in a not-so-distant future, robots could be playing against humans.

"I think that we could see some robots that are sized up to more like real human size and playing against real human players on the soccer field and maybe even winning," Kelle said.