BLACKSBURG -- Stand up.

Lift up your right leg. Put it down.

Lift up your left leg. Put it down.

Shift your weight. Rotate your hips. Swing your arms.

Suddenly, walking doesn't seem so simple.

That's one lesson a team of engineering students at Virginia Tech has learned as they've designed and programmed DARwIn. The "Dynamic Anthropomorphic Robot with Intelligence" is the first humanoid robot from the United States to qualify for RoboCup, an international competition to promote robotics and artificial intelligence through a soccer skills competition.

The ultimate goal of RoboCup is to field a team of robots by 2050 that can defeat a world champion soccer team. Based on how much work it takes to just keep the robots upright, it could be a pretty ambitious goal.

"Just making it walk is a tremendously difficult problem," said Karl Muecke, Tech's graduate advisor for the DARwIn project. "It's an extremely complicated motion, and if you try modeling it mathematically it becomes sort of a real headache. ...You have to tell it exactly what to do. There's not really any robot that can sort of figure it out for themselves."

About 2 feet tall with human proportions, DARwIn is equipped with sensors that allow it to maintain its balance and feel with its feet. It has rotating and stationary cameras to detect objects. The robot is programmed to be autonomous. Its brain is a computer about as powerful as a typical laptop attached to its 9-pound body.

Dennis Hong, a mechanical engineering professor and founder and director of the Tech's Robotics and Mechanisms Laboratory, built the first version of the robot three years ago for a Korean company looking for a way to show off the company's small but powerful motors. That version did not include the cameras, computer or sensors that the current version has.

To move like a human, DARwIn is also equipped with motors that control movement of its 23 "degrees of freedom" -- the equivalent of human joints.

Using software called LabView, students are able to program DARwIn's sensors and motors to accomplish different tasks. When visitors to Tech's lab from the University of Darmstadt, Germany, saw DARwIn, they asked if the robot was going to compete in RoboCup.

"We said, 'RoboCup? What's RoboCup?' " Hong said.

So DARwIn was taught to find a ball with his cameras and kick it. Qualifying for RoboCup was just one of the honors the robot has received. DARwIn has already won second place in an international student mechanism design competition and graced the cover of a Servo, a robotics trade magazine.

Hong expects more attention when DARwIn competes in RoboCup, which will be held at Georgia Tech in July. The Discovery Channel and British Broadcasting Channel have also shown interest in DARwIn and other robots in Hong's lab. DARwIn is also the subject of a YouTube clip that's been viewed more than 13,000 times.

While DARwIn is the most advanced robot in Hong's lab, teams of undergraduate and graduate students are working on others. Two three-legged robots are designed to move by a unique mode of locomotion, patented in the lab. Hong recently received a $400,000 grant from the National Science Foundation for another robotic locomotion system designed to mimic the amoeba.

But amidst the rows of robots and other innovations on display at Virginia Tech's Engineering Technology Showcase on Tuesday, the toy-sized robot that moves like a human received the most attention. And there's more to come -- DARwIn's computer has a capacity that far exceeds the robot's current functions.

DARwIn has no ears but can read words. Hong's plans for the robot include teaching it to respond to written words, such as waving if someone holds a piece of paper in front of it that says "hello." Hong also hopes to teach the robot how to play blackjack.

"You can kind of think of DARwIn as kind of a baby right now," said Tech senior Laurence O'Neil. "And we have to teach the baby."

That takes a lot of work in the basement of Tech's Randolph Hall. Students combine electrical and mechanical engineering with computer science, routinely putting in more than 20 hours a week. Hong was in the lab until 4:30 a.m. Tuesday working with students making adjustments to their robots before the showcase. But they don't really look at it as work.

"It's easy, when you have a cool project, to put time in," O'Neil said.

In fact, students like it so much that several sophomores and juniors volunteer without receiving any credit. Their goal is to get their foot in the door with hopes to get to work in the lab for their senior project. And the pipeline continues for those who want to do graduate work, Hong said.

"As they're doing this they realize, 'Oh, this is research. This is fun.' "