2002/1/9
Herbert A. Simon on Robotic Soccer

The late Herbert A. Simon, in the conclusion of his lecture at the Earthware Symposium at Carnegie Mellon University on "Forecasting the Future or Shaping it?" presented his impressions on robotic soccer research. The complete lecture is a master piece and can be viewed at

http://www.ul.cs.cmu.edu/,
Lectures > Symposia > Newell and Simon Inauguration and Earthware Symposium.

Here is a brief extract of his lecture:
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"Here around CMU, we have been amazed, amused, gratified, and instructed by the developments in robot soccer. For four years, and with rapidly increasing skill, computers have been playing a human game requiring skillful coordination of all the senses and motor capabilities of each player, as well as communication and coordination between players on each team, and strategic responses to the moves of the opposing team. We have seen in the soccer games, an entire social drama, played out with far less skill (thus far) than professional human soccer, but with all the important components of the latter clearly visible. Here we see, in a single example, a complex web of all the elements of intelligence and learning -- interaction with the environment and social interaction, use of language -- that artificial intelligence has been exploring for half a century, and a harbinger of its promise for continuing rapid development. Almost all of our hopes and concerns for the future can be examined in miniature in this setting, including our own role in relation to computers."