As the 2006 World Cup in Germany gets world attention, a very
special event, the "Robot World Cup"?or "RoboCup" was unveiled
in Bremen, Germany on June 14, and the University of Science and
Technology of China (USTC) will host the event in 2008.
This year's RoboCup attracted from around the world more than
440 "teams" representing 20,000 robot fans from 36 countries and
regions.
This five-day event closed yesterday and Japan's Team Osaka were
champions. The RoboCup is divided into five categories: simulation,
small and middle sizes, four-legged and humanoid.
After stiff competition and great efforts, the USTC, Suzhou
local authorities of Jiangsu Province and the National RoboCup
Committee will, on behalf of China, hold the 2008 competition in
Suzhou. The 2007 competition is going to Atlanta, the US.
RoboCup, first held in 1997, is an annual international joint
project to promote artificial intelligence (AI), robotics and
related technologies.?
The event is an attempt to foster AI and robotic research by
providing a standard problem where a wide range of technologies can
be integrated and examined.
Soccer was chosen as the central topic of research with the aim
of innovations being developed and applied for socially significant
problems and industries. The ultimate goal of the RoboCup is to
develop a team of fully autonomous, humanoid robots that would beat
the human world soccer team champion by 2050.
In order for a robot team to actually play soccer, various
technologies must be incorporated, including design principles of
autonomous agents, multi-agent collaboration, strategy acquisition,
real-time reasoning, robotics and sensor-fusion. RoboCup will be
for a team of fast-moving robots operating in a dynamic
environment.
RoboCup also offers a software platform for research on the
software requirements of such a competition. One of the possible
applications of RoboCup technology could be in search and rescue in
large-scale disasters.
(China.org.cn by Wang Ke, June 19, 2006)
