US Claims 2015 RoboCup

"Just days after defeating Japan in the World Cup women's soccer final, the U.S. has scored a similar victory at RoboCup, otherwise known as the Robot Soccer World Cup.

Entered by a group of engineers from the University of Pennsylvania, the team of fully autonomous "THORwin" robots managed to defeat Iran 5-4 in the final for adult-sized humanoid bots.

This year's RoboCup tournament, which took place in the city of Hefei near Shanghai, attracted hundreds of participants from almost 50 countries. The contest offers a range of categories, including for humanoid and non-humanoid robots of various sizes. Winners in other categories included teams from Australia and Japan.

Related: American MegaBot to face off against Japanese Kuratas next year

The aim of the RoboCup contest, which has been running for nearly 20 years, is to encourage the development of robotic and AI technology. It also has the highly ambitious plan to create a humanoid team capable of taking on the very best human side in a one-off showdown before 2050. The organizers actually state that they want the robots to take on future winners of the World Cup, but judging by some of the footage in the video above, engineers clearly have their work cut out."

http://www.foxnews.com/tech/2015/07/23/us-wins-another-soccer-world-cup-this-time-with-humanoid-robots/?intcmp=ob_article_sidebar_video&intcmp=obinsite

http://www.robocup.org/

and even more interesting...

""With 1 gram of high-explosive charge, you can blow a hole in someone's head with an insect-size robot," artificial intelligence researcher at the University of California, Berkeley, Stuart Russell wrote in the journal Nature earlier this year. "Is this the world we want to create? I don't want to live in that world.""

http://www.news.com.au/technology/innovation/stephen-hawking-elon-musk-warn-of-artificial-intelligence-impact-on-future-war-oppression/story-fnpjxnlk-1227459738390

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ayovPr_WjSM