New name for soccer complex

Subway has named the Winnipeg Soccer Federation Indoor Soccer Complex at the University of Manitoba. Your soccer schedule will say you have game at Subway SoccerSouth.

Subway has stepped up its sponsorship of the facility, hence the new name.

“The Winnipeg Soccer Federation is very excited to partner with Subway Restaurants, an organization that represents and promotes healthy eating and lifestyle choices,” Devon Kashton, president of the WSF, told ChrisD.ca, a local news website. “We couldn’t have picked a more appropriate company to partner with.”

The Sno-Bots

Here’s something you may not know

In August of 2013 U of M robots played soccer in an international competition, which they won!

Developed at the University of Manitoba, the Autonomous Agents Laboratory’s robotics competition team – the SnoBots – won the kid-size division of the 2013 FIRA HuroCup in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

FIRA is the oldest robotics competition in the world, and the HuroCup is one of the most challenging competitions in existence: a single humanoid robot must compete in an octathalon that consists of a sprint, marathon, lift-and-carry, obstacle run, weight lifting, basketball free-throws, soccer penalty kicks and a climbing wall. These collectively challenge a robotics team in a broad range of skills central to humanoid motion, complex motion planning and human-robot interaction.

The University of Manitoba SnoBots, named Jimmy and Jeff, came in first place in wall climbing, first place in weightlifting, second in United Soccer (where the robot must join with other competitors to form a soccer team), fourth in sprinting and fifth in soccer penalty kicks. Based on the score across all events, the team won the highly-coveted all around event: the King’s class at HuroCup.

John Anderson, head of computer science, says, “Doing well in one event is usually a tough goal when you have only two students going and many teams have a dozen, and the competition is the best in the world. But doing well enough across the board to win the entire event is an enormous achievement-we’re overjoyed both with the performance and what it demonstrates about our core research.”

Watch them do  victory dance