RoboCup - football and research

The RoboCup is an international joint project to promote the research of artificial intelligence, robotics and associated areas of research.

The final goal of the RoboCup project is:

Development of a fully autonomous humanoid robot team, which can play and win against a human world championship football team by the end of 2050.
Football was chosen as a theme because the robots need a lot of human skills to play the game as true to the original as possible. These skills are, in turn, also increasingly required by robots in the industry (seeing, using keys, decision making, etc.). The first competitions were held in Japan in 1997. Since then many disciplines have formed:

• Humanoid League (bipeds of different sizes)
• Middle-sized League (vehicles of different sizes)
• Small-Size-League (vehicles of different sizes)
• Simulation-League with the lower legs
• MixedReality (computer simulation with real vehicles)
• 2D (computer simulation)
• 3D (computer simulation)

For some time now there are also non-football related disciplines:

• @Home (service robots for the household)
• Rescue (robots in disaster relief)
• Junior (children / student competition)

The aim of the games, besides shooting the most goals in the soccer game, is to further develop the soft- and hardware. Furthermore, the technologies will also be used in teaching and research.

More information about the RoboCup:
- www.robocup.org
- www.robocup-german-open.de
- en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robocup

When the first RoboCup football tournament with 38 teams from 11 countries was held in Japan in 1997, no one would have thought that 10 years later more than 300 teams from 39 countries would participate.

The RoboCup takes place in different country every year. The next one will be held in Graz from the 28th of June until the 6th of July. Last year in Germany, the German team WF Wolves became world champions in the MixedReality category. Of course we will try to win the title this year in Graz...

More about the RoboCup World Championship on the website: www.robocup.org

The German Open, similar to their present form, were first held in Paderborn in 2001. Since then the German preliminary decisions for the world championship in robot-football take place every year (since 2007 at the Hanover Fair). The top three teams are allowed to travel to the World Cup. Also non-German teams are admitted to the German Open. It is also possible to apply for the World Cup without qualifying at the German Open. Same as in 2008, the "Mobile Robots & Autonomous Systems" exhibition center was almost completely reserved for the RoboCup and its leagues (including junior) in 2009. Thus, the RoboCup is made accessible to a very big audience. The interest and steady growth of new teams is correspondingly high. Most of the teams consist of students, employees and professors from universities and colleges. Pupils usually play in the junior leagues.