Well, robot dog soccer is one of five games that teams of scholars competed in during the 2005 RoboCup U.S. Open. RoboCup is a three-day competition, which ends Tuesday, May 10, 2005, is to develop software for better robots with the long-term goal of fielding a robot soccer team good enough to play a human team by 2050. Hahaha … I wonder how painful will it be when the human football player smack into the robot.

Anyway, in this robot dog soccer, the robot dogs by default are programmed to act like pets, but when programmers insert their own programs into it, the robot dogs search for the ball with the cameras in their noses, chase it, silently communicate with each other over a wireless network and ultimately try to put the apple-sized ball into the goal. One dog is programmed to be goalkeeper.

“RoboCup is primarily organized to drive software that will make really aware robots possible,” RoboCup U.S. Open Chairman Tucker Balch said. “Soccer provides a really nice testing environment. Everyone understands soccer so we don’t have to explain what they’re trying to do.”

[Source]