Robofootball: Doublespin

As the 21st century progressed, the field of robotics exploded. In the 20th century, there was little more than fantastic and even hokey science fiction creations with mime-like puppet movement and big heads with antennas followed by Isaac Asimov’s R. Daniel, Data from Star Trek the Next Generation, Bicentennial Man, and a host of other android or cyborg-like hybrids including a Disney animated feature. Robots were big, and little too. In the real world, the field of robotics was born out of creating more efficient mechanical industrial equipment, with the goal, like the tractor replacing the horse and plow, being the eventual replacement of high maintenance human workers with those of mechanical monsters. Machines don’t require food, water, salaries, benefits, bathroom breaks, sick days, vacation pay, a safe work environment, and did not strike or lobby for collective bargaining. Sure, machines break down, everything does, but they don’t talk back or file grievances either. They also make fewer mistakes and don’t get bored doing repetitive tasks.

With computerized functions framed within integrated circuits, microchips, and programmed software, robots have gradually become smarter than people in some respects. IBM’s Deep Blue finally knocked off Gary Kasparov, the once undisputed chess champion of the world. IBM followed up with Watson, who proved to be superior at Jeopardy than the greatest human champions of all time. By 2013, there were 1 ¼ million industrial robots working worldwide, double that figure by 2020. Robotic machines vacuum floors, analyze documents, act as pharmacists as they pick, package, and dispense individual doses of pills; scan bar codes, drive automated cars, work as astronauts, serve as scanners for self-serve checkouts, can act as entertainers and even baby sitters for children, can reach areas during disasters that humans cannot, work as security guards, act as butlers, serve as caretakers for the elderly, and finally, as secret military soldiers as the days of storm troopers and mech warriors comes ever so closer.

The Japanese may have been ahead of the curve when it came to androids or more human-like robots; nevertheless, America’s technologically-oriented universities like Kettering, Tennessee Tech, Cal Tech, MIT, Texas Tech, Georgia Tech, and anything else with a “Tech” in it, have all studied how humans see actions and motions in robots. Much of the most recent research has focused on creating fluidic motion for robots, then having human observers guess what the robot is doing by observing robotic body language, adding a somewhat subjective aspect to the objective. The next evolutionary step in robotic movement is to program variety within each motion, the 100 hand-wave scenario for instance. Rather than wave the same way every single time, programmers design the robot to wave differently which leads to people to forget that this is the same robot that they were interacting with previously.

Prior to the introduction of robotic football players, for well over two decades robots were designed to fight and annihilate one another in cage-oriented machine-on-machine combat competitions utilizing everything from cat-and-mouse strategy to grappling, ripping, sawing, smashing, wedging, and slicing & dicing with spinning blades. Not only have engineers and machinists put bots together, but so have students, professors, high school teachers, and even artists; all fine tuning their creations into lethal killers. Combat matches between robots are generally 3 minutes long with a 100 kilogram (220-pound) weight limit.

A true robot must have some sort of neural network or onboard brain. For example, a remote-control car is merely a toy and not a robot since it has no way of making a decision on its own. Then again, a robot with a brain can still accept instructions from an operator and still be called a robot. The RFL robots would be much more like these models with thumb jockeys, either controlling their movements directly by remote signal, or sending a program instruction for each play and letting the robot carry it out on its own.

Building a robot from scratch is not easy as the teams at various universities like Kettering had taken years to find out. Early models from which they were now building on contained a base or shell of some sort, perhaps with limbs, motor drive circuits, micro controllers, numerous sensor circuits, servos, and programming to integrate it all. Everything had to be designed and built from scratch. Robotic departments soon resembled modern computerized machine shops with drill presses, CNC milling machines, lathes, grinders, sanders, EDM machines, and clean rooms for doing miniaturized electronics with circuit boards, microchips, capacitors, resistors, toggle switches, pin headers, op amps, potentiometers, comparators, LED’s, screws, casings, wiring, microcircuits, wheels, connectors, pins, boards, datasheets, micro converters, brain boards, micro gears & gear boxes, and so forth. Then there was the program team to compile machine code usually in C, though Java, BASIC, C++, Python, Lisp, XML, and Assembly were all viable though unlike standard languages, computer logic concepts are the same as computer languages only vary by syntax.

Despite precision work, tolerance, and measurement completed by industrial robotic machinery, they are far from perfect. Given a standard wrench or socket without any sort of gauge, dial, or line measurement, a human will tighten a bolt that varies widely from one person to another unlike robotic operation. A robot can be programmed to grip an object, swing it to a specific location, and then insert, fasten, screw, bolt, stack, sort, and so forth with extreme uniformity. What it cannot do is align itself perfectly nor use encoders with absolute zero drift. Error will always exist as robots can work in precision, but not to perfection, particularly at the atomic level. All sensors have a resolution setting and such things as bumps, friction, air or wind resistance, vibration, calibration, imperfect terrain, electrical noise, gearing backlash, timing belt slippage, electrical interference, normal wear and tear, and even computational rounding in the programming can all adversely affect the unachievable goal of ultimate perfection; nonetheless, one of the overriding factors in error is simply the money and/or funding involved in the project.

Precision work in manufacturing is often defined as one one-thousandth of an inch or + or – 0.001 like the 3rd generation or Gen 3 Japanese RFL models. To achieve say a 0.0001% error or one-millionth or basically the micro level for a sensor, the more expensive it becomes and the more difficult it is to use. In software programming, a robot would have to store that many decimal places in countless lines of its coding, which in turn becomes a huge drain in processing power and memory. If your robot is pulling small clamps off of an assembly line and just dumping them haphazardly into a bin or crate sitting on a 4-foot square pallet, one might get by with an error factor of 25%. If they are pulling more sensitive camshafts or crankshafts that have to be placed in a packing box within a precisely cutout Styrofoam mold, then one may need a 0.1% error.

A standard basketball hoop is 18 inches in diameter. If your robot misses by a couple of inches, then the ball will still go into the basket unless it is one of those cheater hoops found at Carnival Games that may be only 16 or even 15 inches in diameter. A robot driving a car can get by with a few percent of lane drift error as long as it indeed stays in the lane without getting too close to the division markers.

In the long run, precision is all based on sensors and robots have many of them, usually categorized into local and global. Local sensors are encoders, range finders, camera, and so forth. On the other hand global sensors are like a directional compass that use both GPS coordinates as well as pressure indicators. Local sensors monitor in high resolution but do drift with error unlike global sensors that navigate more precisely. Local sensors are mandatory and are utilized to detect and minimize errors. For a robot driver, the local sensors simply keep it on the road while the global sensors detect and reduce drift. It’s a whole different story when the systems crash or malfunction.

Robots built for combat or just contact as football players must be able to suffer a good deal of abuse and damage just to survive. The new Robotic Football League or RFL could easily have substituted androids for robots since the 127-page guide on rules, regulations, and most importantly, industrial specifications was enough to make NASCAR specs look like a Dick and Jane elementary reader without Spot. Since America had stubbornly refused to adopt full metric measurements, particularly in sports, design specs were given in English; after all, basketball rims were 18 inches in diameter with a 15-foot free throw line, hockey nets were 6 feet long and 4 feet high, the pitcher’s mound is 60 feet from home plate while the bases are 90 feet apart, the big numbers on the baseball field outfield walls were in feet, and a football field, at least in America, was a short 100 yards long and 160 feet wide.

Robotic players could vary from 5’6” in height to 6’6” and weigh between 200 and 300 pounds similar to the anatomical dimensions of a typical human player. Any shorter, the players might pop through the legs of their opponents and too much height would make blocking passes and kicks too easy. With reference to jumping, a 3-foot vertical leap was the maximum allowed. The idea was to be as human-like as possible as robotic players were required to have a torso, 2 arms, 2 legs, a head, and joints at the ankles, knees, elbows hips, shoulders, and neck. The torso width had to be less than torso length, and the vertical length of the torso cannot exceed half the overall height, but still had to be a minimum of 40%. The hip to ground ratio must also be a minimum of 40% but cannot exceed half the overall height. Thus the two together served to eliminate a robot with extra long or stubby legs. Likewise, to eliminate overly long arms, the wingspan was limited to no more than a 10% variance from the overall height. Vertical hand spans could only vary between 6 and 10 inches inclusive while foot spans could go from a minimum of 8 inches in length up to 16 inches. Digits cannot exceed 5 though offensive guards and tackles were allowed to have their digits fuses to eliminate holding.

There was some leeway provided for the shape of the head given that it could be spherical, elliptical, angled, or block-like; nevertheless, overall height and diameter had to be within 10 to 16 inches inclusive, and the width could not exceed the height. To mimic the NFL game, certain limiters had to be put in place as well. Robotic players would not be able to throw the ball farther than 60 yards; hence, eliminating an aired out 100+ yard pass from one end zone to the other. Speed was limited to 100 yards in 10 seconds or projected out to 176 seconds for 1,760 yards which was approximately 20 mph. None of the organizers of the rules wanted to see a 100 mph robot running the length of the field in 2 seconds or less.

There was much to consider, all with the ultimate goal of imitating human play and players as closely as possible. There would be no external wheels, no weapons, and no rounded vacuum cleaners except for the robotic clean-up or sweeper crew. The sweepers would soon become as popular as some of the players as they were little more than garbage truck-like bots with accompanying walking models. They would quickly become mascots painted up with team colors like a hockey Zamboni until the advertising revenue poured in. Some would be sponsored by beer and soda advertisers with bright colors like red and white for Coca-Cola or Budweiser.

The sweepers would become an integral part of the game as they would frequently be called in to clean up the debris from the mayhem on the field. A player was considered incapacitated when it had 2 non-functioning limbs, couldn’t stand, had its head knocked off, or simply froze up, died or became inoperative on the field. Initially 50 robots were allowed per team, but after the first year held in 2019, 10 backup reserves along with replacement parts were allowed in the locker rooms. A team was still allowed to play if they were down to 9 functioning players, but any less than that, and the game would be ended under the mercy rule; however, the team had to be losing by more than 16 points or two touchdowns plus 2-point conversions. If not, then they had to keep players until they got that far behind. Three instances of this would happen in the inaugural 2019 season, and it would happen to lowly Arkansas twice.

The greatest leeway was given in terms of body material and programming. The body could be made of most any plastic composite, metal alloy, or even ceramic hybrids too though such things as glass or porcelains that were subject to breaking or shattering with sharp chards were not allowed. In the end, they would all be made with light metal alloy exterior skins with padding underneath. The Japanese 1st generation or Gen 1 models had little more than fairly heavy tempered aluminum frames and skins with thick cloth padding enclosed within sealed vinyl liners. They were very strong but lacked mobility and flexibility. They were built originally designed to play soccer and were quickly adapted to football while the Gen 2 production was just getting under way during opening season 2019. Less than a year from opening day kickoff the Japanese already had Gen 3’s in the works as there was money to be made. The Gen 3’s were far more expensive, but some of the Americans would pay extra for space-age industrial materials like those found on a very high end sports car: new handcrafted aluminum-titanium sub frames with hydro formed rail expansion joints, cast magnesium skulls, and extensive use of carbon fiber outer hulls that were fairly strong and lighter in weight, though not quite as strong as the original somewhat bulky and clunky Gen 1’s.

The brain or actual computer control center was where weight was a significant problem. The average human brain is only 3 pounds while that of a new RFL model was typically 5 times that amount once the computer, sensor controls, camera, circuits, wiring, backup systems, antenna, and hardened skull were all factored in. The head was the command center and new positronic-like brains were developed by both the Japanese and the American tech schools like Kettering specifically for playing football. Naturally a power source, usually located somewhere in the back of the torso, was necessary to run all of the systems. Approved lithium batteries and fuel cells were allowed, but no direct liquid fuels like gasoline, and certainly nothing radioactive either.

The electronics had to be tough and well protected too. Like the lemon cars of the 1980’s, engineers soon found that moisture like rain and snow, and extreme temperatures like the heat of the California desert or the frigidness of northern Alaska was brutal to sensitive electronics and computer controls. Not all RFL stadiums would be indoors and simple things like camera vision could not be made on the cheap. Blue color maxes out in bright sunlight or stadium lights which had to be accounted for. New, expensive wireless models with several resolution options incorporating the latest photo transmitters, infrared sensors, and light settings was necessary for robotic sight. Since the new owners and coaches, with the latter being nothing more than thumb jockey supervisors, soon discovered that remote control of robotic players by humans was by far superior to attempting a programmed play response.

A vast network of extremely high resolution monitors had to be set up indoors at each stadium to view what the players must see; in short, Madden Football to its extreme, only real and not virtual. Each team would be allowed as many player controllers as they desired, but of course, there would only be 11 players for each team on the field at one time. To further mimic the old NFL standard, the quarterback was required to speak if just for hiking the ball. It wasn’t much but still required digital audio, another internal electronic card, speakers, and voice synthesizers; thus, more cost and weight to contend with. The quarterback is and was always the key player at any game at any level. It wasn’t all that difficult to produce lowly linemen and even linebackers. Blocking and tackling were fairly routine robotic movements; however, throwing, catching, kicking, and even defending receivers was far more challenging from all standpoints: design, construction, programming, communication, and control. It was no wonder that the quarterback cost 2 to 3 times that of the other models. Every single sensor required its own circuit board or connection, and, like the wing of a jet aircraft, the arm of the quarterback soon became one of the most sophisticated pieces of technology on the planet.

Although the initial Gen 1 players originated from Japanese soccer player models, the eventual Gen 3 model would spark a quarterback arm design based on a German patent by the Frauhoff Institute of Robotics. The firm was inspired by the trunk of an elephant, which, due to some 40,000 muscle fibers, is one of the strongest, most flexible, mobile, and precise grasping organs in the wildlife kingdom. The new robotic arm is made of an extremely flexible material called polyamide and moves with compressed air that either fills or empties a series of ringed or hose-like chambers to provide pressure. Pressure is built up, and then released to throw the ball. The original 4 digits at the end consisted of 3 longer fingers and a thumb for gripping that were specifically modified and adapted with an extra digit for grasping a standard-sized football. The same pneumatic throwing system was adapted to the leg of the kicker as well in the later Gen 3 models.

In the meantime, the Gen 1 quarterback had very imprecise throwing ability. It was more of a spring tension computer controlled mechanical release that cocked the arm back at the elbow, and then propelled forward to release the ball. It was strictly set at an angle that measured every 5 degrees. The body could turn and throw at 30 degrees, or 35 or 40, but not at say 32.5; the error factor was too high for anything resembling precision. The Gen 1’s in general were blocky in shape, but durable as nearly all took advantage of the 300 pound maximum weight threshold when they were first built.

During the first season in 2019, Gen 2’s started appearing a little later on and were made lighter with less aluminum mixed in with some titanium and soft stainless steel that allowed more flexibility; nevertheless, they didn’t seem to crash test as well as the Gen 1’s. That was important given the constant impacts and break downs that would occur in a typical game. The Gen 3’s would eventually combine the best of the 1st two generations: heavier more durable bodies with great flexibility, along with far more sophisticated programming, or more to the point, they were far more intelligent. The new pneumatic arms and legs allowed for an impressive 0.01% error factor which led to far more precision throwing, catching, and kicking. The Gen 3’s could run circles around the slower Gen 1’s, and at least 180 degree half circles around the Gen 2’s. By season 2 nonetheless, only a limited number of Gen 3’s would be available and they would be a highly sought after commodity, at least by the teams who shelled out the money for them.

Painting and color schemes improved with each successive model too. Unlike pro teams, there were no separate home and away colors. Each team could incorporate two colors that had to be approved by the RFL Board of Commissioners to prevent clashing. There were only 12 teams in the league in each of the first two seasons, so color clashing would not be much of an issue. Later on down the road, if the RFL survived and expanded, then perhaps teams would have to give their spray booths more workouts if they indeed went to the home and away approach for color coordination. The new Michigan Robocats were approved for blue and silver, the same colors as the defunct Detroit Lions; nevertheless, the Lions may have had copyrights for the various logos and trademarks, but they did not have a monopoly on colors.

During the prototype testing phase, one of the biggest problems that arose was the ability to catch the ball. Although Gen 1 quarterbacks had little trouble grasping and throwing the ball, albeit at the 5-degree angle variations, the receivers were not well equipped or adept in the catching department. As a result, a new magnetic football was developed. It was still covered in synthetic leather on favor of the vaunted brown pigskin; nevertheless, the inner shell was made of magnetized aluminum. Those catching the ball which included standard receivers, tight ends, and running backs on offense; safeties, corners and linebackers in the defensive secondary; were all able to be equipped with special sensors on their hands to aid in attracting and holding the ball. Restrictions were placed on the amount of attraction that varied on the light end and an unscientific test was developed such that an official could grab and remove the ball from a robotic sensor hand with little more than 5 foot pounds of pressure like a medium handshake. The attraction had to be minimal to prevent players from latching on to one another.

The rule sparked a penalty referred to as “welding” for those players who might exceed the grab and pluck rule, and perhaps had a little too much trouble releasing the ball when it was in their grasp after a play was over. Since the offensive linemen did not have independent fingers, just solid hands without gaps, offensive holding was significantly reduced. Only those with the magnetized hands might magnetically latch on to an opposing player a bit too strongly and get flagged. Another unique rule was the limb rule in that a player carrying the ball, who lost a limb, was considered a tackle. That prevented a player from holding a ball in one arm while losing the limb from the other, and still being able to continue forward. A butt, knee, or elbow was considered down, even if one of them detached! This coincided with the limb rule. All in all, aside from a few odd alterations like the welding penalty and the limb rule, the new RFL tried its best to mimic and adopt the sacred standard football rules that the now defunct NFL had utilized with just a few necessary exceptions.

“The heart bowed down by weight of woe

To weakest hope will cling.”

Alfred Bunn, Song from The Bohemian Girl