TOS 2006 competition at SFU

Exactly one year has passed since the last TOS soccer competition at SFU. Today I was again invited by Prof. Kyrylov to his simulation class to watch the final competition. It was fun! Students were obviously excited. They were commenting on every goal scored, every goal saved, every beautiful pass, and every sign of intelligence. They were discussing offensive and defensive team strategies. They were exchanging ideas on individual player tactics. The whole classroom was filled with excitement. As for me, I was equally stimulated, if not more. It's great to hear people talking TOS, using TOS and playing TOS.

At the Q&A session, we also got some interesting feedbacks and suggestions from the students. For example, one student was concerned about the cheating by players through the communication channels outside of TOS. Another student was suggesting ways to differentiate goalie from other players.

According to Prof. Kyrylov's survey, more than 75% of his students prefer TOS as their course project than several other choices. Truly, if you are given a choice to play and to learn at the same time, I say go for it!

Prof. Vadim Kyrylov has done a great job in teaching his students in both the scientific methodology and the practical programming skills. Thanks also go to his teaching assistant, Nima Kaviani, for setting up the competition environment. Nima himself has substantial experience in RoboCup. The simulated soccer team, RoboSina that he co-developed, won the US Open competition in 2004 and 2005 and was in top six in the World competitions in 2004 and 2005.