No sooner has the England football team returned home from Euro 2004 with its dreams of glory shattered than the Open University has taken up the bid to win sporting honours in Portugal. It has led a team of British schoolchildren to Lisbon for the RoboCup 2004 competition, which tests the dribbling, tackling and shooting skills of robots from across the globe. Expect a novel twist on the usual clichés. Inevitably, some robots will be "sick as a cyber parrot" by the tournament's end. But could the OU team be "Over the moon... and crash-landed on Mars"?