Bowdoin’s competitive robotics team, Northern Bites, played recently at the annual 2012 RoboCup U.S. Open, held in the Sidney J. Watson Arena. Though Bowdoin didn’t come up tops in the competition, team advisor and professor of computer science Eric Chown said he was pleased with the team’s performance. Adding to their challenge of programming robots to autonomously play soccer, students this year also had to teach their robots how to distinguish between two identical yellow goals. In previous years, the goals have been different colors, helping the robots determine which side of the field they were on.

This video captures a slice of the action at the recent RoboCup games.