Work to replace a pipe on Virginia 720 (Barringer Mount/Spaulding Road) near the Plum Creek section of Montgomery County will cause a section of the road to be closed to through traffic daily starting Monday.

The affected area starts 0.7 mile from U.S. 11 and extends to 1.1 miles from Virginia 719 (Switchback Road), according to a news release from the Virginia Department of Transportation.

Weather permitting, the closure will be in place from 8 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. daily through Friday.

-- The Roanoke Times

DARwIn competing in Austrian contest

Virginia Tech and its soccer-playing robot are back.

RoboCup 2009 is taking place in Graz, Austria, this week and a new version of DARwIn — the “Dynamic Anthropomorphic Robot with Intelligence” created in Tech’s Robotics and Mechanisms Laboratory — is taking the field.

DARwIn IV will try to improve on last year’s results. DARwIn III was the only American entry in the competition’s humanoid division in 2008. It was trounced by top teams from Japan and Germany before losing by a coin flip in its third game against the University of Manitoba.

RoboCup is an international competition to promote robotics and artificial intelligence with a goal of developing a team of autonomous humanoid robot soccer players by 2050 that will be able to defeat the World Cup champions. This year’s event features about 3,000 participants from 40 countries.

As of midday Thursday, DARwIn was 0-1-1, losing 1-0 in the first match against a team from Freie Universitat Berlin before tying a team from Tsinghua University in Beijing in the second game, 0-0. The competition ends Sunday.

For more information about RoboCup, go to robocup2009.org. To check in on the team’s progress, go to web.mac.com/dennishong or twitter.com/romelavt. For more information about the team, go to www.me.vt.edu/Robocup.

-- Greg Esposito

Radford, RU awarded transportation grant

The city of Radford and Radford University have been awarded grant funding for the development of a transit service plan through the Virginia Department of Rail and Public Transportation.

The plan will include the needs of residents and university students, the level of demand for the service, the cost and potential routes, according to a news release from the city.

To help gauge the level of demand and design of potential routes, residents and student input will be gathered over the coming months. While exact methods are still being determined, surveys will likely be conducted across the city, according to the release.

It is unclear the exact amount of the grant.

The transit service plan is expected to be completed in November. If the study shows a need for public trasportation in Radford, funding assistance would then be pursued for the fiscal year 2011, according to the release.

The plan is being developed by Cambridge Systematics and the KFH Group, with the assistance of the Radford Transit Committee, which includes representatives from the city, university, Department of Social Services, Main Street Radford, Carilion Clinic and other nonprofit organizations.

-- Amy Matzke-Fawcett