Tony Tye, Post-Gazette The QRIO Click photo for larger image.

They are little Sony robots known as QRIOs, but one could swear they're little people wearing gray plastic armor.

They move with swaying motions and flexible joints that make them humanlike. They dance, lie down, stand, walk and gesture in ways that amaze us real bipeds.

But the two humanoid robots are certain to draw international attention next week for another reason.

Ami and Sango, programmed with software developed at Carnegie Mellon University, will provide color commentary for spectators during the RoboCup 2006 World Championship that begins Wednesday in Bremen, Germany.

The competition in four robot categories will involve 350 teams from 40 countries. But Ami and Sango will provide commentary only for games played by four-legged Sony robots known as AIBOs.

RoboCup is an international project to promote artificial intelligence, robotics and related fields through robot soccer competitions. The ultimate goal is developing humanoid robots capable of beating the human world soccer champions by 2050, a CMU release states.

Dr. Manuela Veloso, the Herbert Simon Professor of Computer Science and head of CMU's RoboCup teams, and crew provided a demonstration Thursday at CMU, where the robots performed almost flawlessly -- as long as they had enough battery power.

The plan is for Ami and Sango to provide color commentary for many of the AIBO soccer matches during the five-day competition.

RoboCup coincides with the World Cup soccer competition that began yesterday throughout Germany, with its finals scheduled for July 9.

CMU software provides the robots with the ability to track the orange soccer ball as competing AIBOs chase, catch, pass and shoot the ball toward respective goals. Each team has a robot goaltender.

The upstart commentators explain rules, identify which team controls the ball, provide some interesting asides, and comment on fouls and goals, all with synthesized voices that lack human emotion but do reveal personality. They sometimes interrupt each other.

They can see the same thing happen several times but have different reactions each time.

When there is a goal, they pump their gray arms and announce which team scored. At times they provide cheers, including "Go-go-go-go-go."

During halftime, Ami and Sango dance skillfully, in a way that almost could draw an audition on "Dancing with the Stars."

"Sony taught us to dance," the robots said. "They did a great job."

Dr. Veloso said the university will not field a team this year in the AIBO competition because it focused its time developing software for Ami and Sango. CMU will field a team only in the small-robot competition.

But it hopes to capture attention with its robotic commentators. Dr. Veloso's core research laboratory, CORAL, focuses on developing robots that cooperate, observe, reason, act and learn, and Ami and Sango fit that description.

The robots, each 2 1/2 feet tall, do not react solely to what they perceive on the soccer field, which is the size of a small room. They operate from a Sony game controller that sends signals via a wireless transmitter.

But the commentators also get information from a human "referee" who informs them through the game controller when fouls occur or a goal is scored, prompting entertaining reactions. The remainder of the time, they focus their cameras on the ball and comment about what's happening in the field of play based on their own perceptions.

The robots communicate between themselves. If only one robot can see the ball, it informs its partner so commentary can proceed.

Ami and Sango also can receive signals from a puppet master -- a person with a laptop that can take charge to keep dialogue rolling. The puppet master is necessary when unexpected occurrences happen the robots cannot interpret.

"It's hard to get used to the voice because it's a robot voice," Dr. Veloso said. "We want to make it entertaining."

The text of their dialogue will be projected in English and German onto a screen to help people who have difficulty interpreting the unemotional robot idiom.

At the beginning of the demonstration, they introduced themselves and while bowing said, "Welcome to the game."

But by the end, the impression was clear: Welcome to the future.