RoboCup

RoboCup is an international robotics competition and research initiative founded in 1997 to promote AI and robotics through competition, education, and public outreach. Its central aim is to develop autonomous robots that can play soccer and, by 2050, beat the human world champions, a long-term goal that serves to drive progress in perception, decision-making, and team coordination.

The competition encompasses several leagues and domains. In RoboCup Soccer, there are multiple leagues: the Humanoid League (bipedal robots that can walk and kick), the Standard Platform League (teams use identical hardware for fair play), the Middle Size League (larger, more capable robots), the Small Size League (tiny, fast wheeled robots), and the Soccer Simulation Leagues (2D and 3D software-only simulations). Other domains include RoboCup Rescue (disaster-response), RoboCup@Home (service robots), and RoboCupJunior (educational programs).

The RoboCup Federation organizes annual world championships hosted in different countries. The event provides rules, benchmarks, and common software interfaces to enable international collaboration and reproducible research. RoboCup is widely used as a testbed for advances in autonomous perception, motion planning, control, multi-robot systems, and human-robot interaction, and has contributed to education and industry outreach.