Students from Melbourne's RMIT University pose June 23 with soccer-playing robots they helped design.., 1998-06-23...

Students from Melbourne's RMIT University pose June 23 with soccer-playing robots they helped design. The robots will be taken to France to compete in the RoboCup, the World Cup of Robot Soccer to be held in Paris in July - coinciding with the human version of the game. Paul Pansi (L), team coordinator, Anh Van Bui (C) in charge of strategy intelligence, and James Brusey (R) in charge of vision, are part of a six-member team of staff and students from under-graduate to post-graduate levels who have taken six months to design and build five robots. The robots are self directed, have an on-board vision system, a Pentium 166 computer and are propelled by model cars. The event is expected to attract 80 teams and 3,000 competitors from around the world, with millions of spectators watching on the internet.