New Japanese soccer robot shows the way to human-less sports is still long

The “RoboCup Japan Open 2010″ [JP] is currently taking place in Osaka, and the world’s biggest robot soccer tournament has attracted 225 teams from all over the world this time. Started in 1997, the official goal of the RoboCup is to have a team of humanoids play and defeat a team comprised of human soccer players during a “real” world soccer cup sometime around 2050.

But judging from what we can see currently, there is still a long way to go. Take the humanoid you can see on the picture and in the video embedded below, for example. It’s taking part in the RoboCup 2010 Humanoid League‘s adult size class, meaning it competes against other robots that stand between 130 and 160cm tall.

The robot has been jointly developed by Professor Asada’s lab at Osaka University and the Osaka Institute of Technology. It has 22 joints and uses a servo motor (torque: 327kg/cm) offered by major robot maker Vstone.

And I’d say the researchers still have a lot of work to do. Just watch this (short) video that shows their humanoid scoring a goal:

Via Robonable [JP]