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Geneva: The days of Cristiano Ronaldo, Nihat Kahveci and David Villa may be numbered. Machines will soon beat human footballers and it's only a question of when, not if, scientists said on Monday from the sidelines of the European robot football tournament.
"The aim is for a robot team to beat the [human] world champions in 2050," said Rolf Pfeifer, a professor of artificial intelligence at the University of Zurich.
Others are more ambitious.
"I think that by 2015 or 2017 a robot team will beat the Austrian national squad," Peter Kopacek of Vienna's Technical University said. "It'll be 2025 before they beat the Brazilians."
Passing is alien
In any case, machines have a long way to go before they master the tricks of professionals. In the two-legged category, the fastest robots take 35 seconds to complete a 2.4-metre sprint. Others take five minutes, fall over or get hopelessly lost on the field.
In the wheel-driven category, meanwhile, passing is unheard of and the game consists of pushing an orange golf ball into the opposing goal. Still, the sport has come a long way since the mid-1990s, Kopacek said.
"Spectators used to cheer if a robot crept across the field and chanced upon the ball," he said, adding that now there are shots on goal, counter-attacks and even saves by the robot goalkeeper.
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