Robot athlete brings World Championship gold to Britain and Plymouth University

On the weekend that the Jamaican sprint king saw his hopes of retaining his world 100m crown suffer a catastrophic false start, Plymouth University’s bipedal ‘bot “Ferdinand” shattered records in the robot equivalent in Taiwan.

First the 50cm tall, 2.7 kilo competitor beat all comers in the sprint challenge, at the FIRA (Federation of International Robot-soccer Association) Robo World Cup.

Ferdinand then followed up with a crushing victory in the marathon, securing a second gold and world-record time for Britain ahead of 17 nations from across the globe.

Phil Culverhouse, of the Centre for Robotics and Neural Systems at Plymouth University, said: “We’ve designed and refined the robots in-house, building on their capabilities year-on-year, and have worked in conjunction with our students to make them clever, faster, stronger and lighter. We use them in teaching, research and for international competition.

“We now have the fastest robot, in its class, in the world – and that is a testament to the academics and students who have been involved with this project over the past four years.”

A team of four students and one academic travelled to Taiwan for the FIRA competition last weekend, supporting Ferdinand and two back-up robot runners as the sole entrants from the UK.

The sprint challenged the robots to cover a six metre ‘shuttle run’ style course, running up to a marker and then moving backwards to the finish line. After winning the heat, Ferdinand powered past its rivals in the final to cross the line in 42 seconds – beating the previous world best by another 42 seconds.

Then in the marathon – an 84 metre course which required entrants to follow a meandering white line – Ferdinand took gold with a time of 6m 44s, more than a minute ahead of its nearest rival, and 2m 25s faster than the previous world record.

Guido Bugmann, of the University’s School of Computing and Mathematics, and a founding member of the team, said: “We switched to bipedal robots in 2007 because they are more interesting from a research and teaching perspective, and they are also fantastic for creating engagement with the community through the outreach programme.”

Powered by lithium batteries, which can sustain it for up to 40 minutes, Ferdinand has an on-board ARM-based computer, uses a webcam to navigate, and trusty Adidas trainers to help with his balance. And like any self-respecting athlete, it has a wardrobe of clothes courtesy of design students at the University!

The team is concentrating on transferring the athletics success onto the football pitch – and is gunning for the Robo World Cup, held by a university in Germany.

Professor Richard Gibb, Dean of the Faculty of Science and Technology, and Pro Vice-Chancellor, said: “Robot football and robot athletics might appear to be rather frivolous, but the world-class engineering and research behind them is truly outstanding. They also represent a fantastic learning opportunity for students to develop key industry skills which will stand them in good stead in many different fields.

“Plymouth’s robotics research – which includes major European projects into language acquisition, recognition and memory – is now at the forefront of UK higher education.”