ISLAMABAD: The little striker wearing a crescent moon and star jersey lines up his penalty and kicks right, netting his goal as the keeper dives the wrong way and hits the ground yelping in pain.

Both players are teammates practising to represent Pakistan in a major world football tournament.

Unlike their low-ranked flesh-and-blood counterparts, however, these are advanced robots whose programmers are set to compete against students from the world’s top universities as they look to showcase what their country can do in the world of ‘artificial intelligence (AI)’.

Students at the National University of Sciences and Technology (Nust) will this year for the first time send a team to the annual RoboCup, an event featuring 32 universities that will be held in Leipzig, Germany, from June 27 to July 4.

The six machines are NAO humanoid robots purchased from France’s Aldebaran Robotics at a cost of roughly $17,000. It is in fact the third year that Nust, Pakistan’s premier engineering institute, has qualified for the prestigious cup. But a lack of travel funds has meant their dream of representing their country on the world stage had to be placed on hold — until now.

“Our dream came true this year when the university managed to allocate Rs1.5 million ($14,336) for the team’s travel to Germany,” said Dr Yasar Ayaz, head of the department of Robotics and Artificial Intelligence.

The amount is enough only for three students instead of all 10 involved in the project to travel to Germany and participate in the event.

Beating humans

The first robot football league was started in 1993 by a group of Japanese researchers and named the Robot J-League, after the Japanese professional league.

Following a surge of outside interest, the initiative was extended into an international project and the Robot World Cup Initiative, or “RoboCup”, was conceived. The first edition was held in Osaka in 1996.

Students tap away at their laptops in their university lab, programming their code. Zain Murtaza, who leads the 10-member team, sets up the cute robots on their nine-by-six feet pitch, and the action begins. Each robot has two cameras on their faces guiding their movements.

“The cameras take pictures and feed them to the computers installed inside, which help them decide about their movements and recognise movements of the other players,” Ayaz explains.

They walk around the field with short staccato movements, pulling their legs back like a golfer lifts his club before unleashing an ungainly kick that sends the plastic orange ball rolling along the floor.

Mishaps and tumbles are frequent, and the process makes for awkward viewing.

Humans are allowed to make minor interventions, but the robots’ movements are entirely their own.

“This is a whole new world ... I want to teach robotics to students and to tell them how interesting it is to interact with the robots,” says Murtaza, who has completed his Masters in the subject and has plans to complete a doctorate. “These are my babies,” he adds.

Autonomous future?

Pakistan’s progress in the field of AI mirrors its advancement in the IT sector, where the country with a population of 200 million is considered a mid-tier player — particularly for software outsourcing.

Cheap labour, a relatively well-educated middle-class that speaks English and has access to markets in North America helped exports grow to $2.2 billion in the financial year 2014.

According to Ayaz, advancements in AI could also prove valuable to Pakistan’s small manufacturing base, in addition to being the next major area of scientific research.

Earlier this month, Google announced it was setting up a dedicated AI research group to focus on machine learning — a field of computer science that gives computers the ability to learn without being explicitly programmed.

Computing is also a field where increasing numbers of Pakistani women, who have traditionally steered clear of science and technology jobs, see a future for themselves.

“There are a lot of prospects for us to excel in the field of robotics as we pursue higher studies in this subject,” said Asma Ashfaq, one of four female members of the 10-strong team.

Published in Dawn, June 28th, 2016