Darwin, a tree-time RoboCup soccer champ, is a robot built by the UCLA Robotics and Mechanisms Lab. And when he’s not busy scoring goals, the students apparently have Darwin predict who’s going to win the Euro 2016 tournament this summer.
In the video, students set up goals of the countries favored to win the Euros, so they’re already eliminating the possibility of a Greece shock win 2004. Anyway, Darwin had to choose between Belgium, Spain, France, Germany, Portugal and England and whichever goal he was able to kick a ball in would be his predicted champ.
Excuse the cheap joke but given he sent a couple penalties wide, Darwin should be on the England squad. But third time was the charm as Darwin booted a shot into the German goal, predicting Germany would win the Euros.
While it was done in a random way, Germany is a great choice to make as the former FIFA World Cup champs are a popular pick to maintain their winning ways and take the trophy. If successful, this wouldn’t the first time an animal or robot correctly predicted tournament winners. In the 2010 World Cup, Paul the Octopus correctly predicted all of Germany’s games in the tournament.
Some will think this is kind of silly but quite honestly, it’s not a bad way to predict a winner. I mean, I’m currently making predictions of my own on who’s winning the Euros on 32 Flags, and I’ll probably have just as good of a chance of being right as a robot. Or who knows, I may side with Darwin and go with Germany. They are a favorite to win and have the winning edge from 2014, wouldn’t be a bad choice. And if I’m wrong, I can always blame the robot.
