Keeping up Britain's brilliant footballing tradition, the Scottish robotic football team has been knocked out of the 2011 RoboCup.

The event sees teams from around the world pit their robotic inventions against each other in a round of the beautiful game. The University of Edinburgh team, named Edinferno, competed in the simulation league, which uses autonomous computer programs to play.

Closer to a computer game than a footballers take on Terminator 2, it consists of virtual players on screen battling it out. Unfortunately Edinferno didn't make it past the group stages.

The RoboCup also includes varying sizes of real-life robots battling it out in a game of football. Things start out at small size league and go all the way up to humanoid league and adult sized robots, which use penalty shootouts due to the lack of agility found in the giant 'bots. 

The kid size final (easily the highlight of the event) saw USA and Japan battle it out. The Americans thrashed the Japanese 8-1. 

It is worth mentioning that the robots operate entirely autonomously, without control from their 'masters' who created them. This means that it is down to the engineers to program the highest possible level of skill into their bots before matches begin. 

Unlike conventional football this means we have a genuine shot at winning something. Things are level pegging here and Britain's universities are a ready source of master robot builders. Expect us 'linters to keep an eye on RoboCup things to come. 

RoboCup? Or real football?