BANGKOK, July 23 (TNA) – Three Thai robotics teams have returned from Suzhou, China carrying laurels earned at international competition.
Two Chulalongkorn University student teams won championships. The Plasma-Z team won the 2008 RoboCup World Championship Small Size Robot League category, edging out last year's champion, the "CMDragons" from Pittsburgh-based Carnegie Mellon University in the United States, while in the RoboCupRescue category, Chula's Plasma-RX team netted the championship.
Plasma-Z students have been offered scholarships at a leading United States university.
Plasma-Z copped the crown in RoboCupSoccer's Small Size Robot League category, snatching it away from last year's winner, Carnegie Mellon.
A third Thai team, Skuba, from Kasetsart University in Bangkok, won third place.
The main focus of the RoboCup activities is competitive football divided into leagues: Simulation, Small-size Robot, Mid-sized Robot, Standard Platform and Humanoid leagues.
Chulalongkorn carried the day for Thailand at the 2008 RoboCup World Championship July 14-20 in Suzhou, China.
Chula's 16-member team returned to Bangkok Wednesday, with its team leader reporting excitement at dethroning the CMDragons, as Carnegie Mellon University is renowned in the fields of engineering and technology.
It was Thailand's first championship wins after participating in the tournament for five years.
After the upset victory a Carnegie Mellon University representative offered positions at the university for the Thai team members.
Thai Robotics Society chairman Jackrit Suthakorn said that the Chula team's robot soccer technical capacity is quite advanced, that it has overtaken Japan as the team to beat, that it cruises to the finals in competition with teams from China and US.
RoboCup is an international research and education initiative. Its goal is to foster artificial intelligence and robotics research by providing a standard problem where a wide range of technologies can be examined and integrated.
The concept of football-playing robots was first introduced in 1993. (TNA)
General News : Last Update : 19:23:07 23 July 2008 (GMT+7:00)
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