Football debut for Android FC to kick off Science Festival

A team of football playing robots are set to make their debut at the launch of this year's Edinburgh International Science festival.  Android FC consists of a team of three robots; a striker, a defender and a goalkeeper each two foot in height. The robots, created at the University of Edinburgh's School of Informatics, are fully autonomous and are able to sense their surroundings using processors embedded in them, essentially allowing them to respond to the movement of other players. Moreover the robots can learn their skills from human demonstrations.Their talent will be on display on the 3rd and 4th of April at the event "˜Road to RoboCup' to be held in a custom-made arena at the University's In Space Gallery, Informatics Forum Building. The event also marks the start of the team's training for the World Cup, that is the RoboCup android football world contest in 2011.The In Space Gallery will also host discussions by University computer scientists on the challenge of making machines that can mimic people and emotion detection by robots.This year's science festival is to run from 3rd to 17th of April and will see leading scientists from the University present talks as part of the festivals "˜Big Ideas' programme. The University's "˜Discover Science' events will cover a broad range of topics from biodiversity to space exploration and are open to visitors of all ages.Further information and events at the science festival can be found at: www.sciencefestival.co.uk