RoboCup 2012 competition
RoboCup is an international research and education initiative, attempting to encourage Artificial Intelligence and Robotics research by providing a standard problem in which a wide range of technologies can be integrated and examined, as well as being used for integrated project-oriented education.
For this purpose, RoboCup chose to use the soccer game as a primary domain, and organizes every year The Robot World Cup Soccer Games and Conferences. Since 2000, the competitions include Search and Rescue robots as well.
The RoboCup Federation proposed the ultimate goal of the RoboCup Initiative to be stated as follows: "By 2050, a team of fully autonomous humanoid robot soccer players shall win a soccer game, complying with the official FIFA rules, against the winner of the most recent World Cup of Human Soccer."
In order for a robot team to actually perform a soccer game, various technologies must be incorporated, including: autonomous agents design principles, path planning, multi-agent collaboration, real-time planning and control, robotics, and sensor-fusion.
RoboCup includes a number of different robot soccer leagues that focus on different research challenges. In all, however, the robots are fully autonomous, and work without any external intervention by a human being. Israel currently participated in the Standard Platform League (SPL, intended for university students and researchers), and in the Junior league (intended for primary and secondary school students).
The RoboCup™ 2012 contest will take place from June 18th to June 24th, 2012 in Mexico City, Mexico. (http://www.robocup2012.org/)
RoboCupSoccer is divided into the following leagues:
- Simulation league: Independently-moving software players (agents) play soccer on a virtual field inside a computer,
- Small-size robot league: Small robots of no more than 18 cm in diameter play soccer with an orange golf ball,
- Middle-size robot league: Middle-sized robots of no more than 50 cm diameter wide play soccer in teams of up to 6 robots, with an orange soccer ball,
- Standard Platform league: In this league all teams use advanced humanoid robots. The robots operate fully autonomously. Robots can use wireless networking to communicate,
- Humanoid league: Biped autonomous humanoid robots play in matches. In this league all teams use state-of-the-art humanoid robots. The robots operate fully autonomously, i.e. there is no external control, neither by humans nor by computers. All sensors are on-board. Robots can use wireless networking to communicate. No distance sensors are allowed in order to adapt the robots to human senses. Just a digital camera and gyro sensors are allowed.
40 university teams sent requests to participate in the Kid Size League (KSL), which is a part of the Humanoid league. Only 24 teams were qualified from all over the world. One of the qualified teams is the Bar-Ilan team (Engineering Faculty) RoBIU (BIU for Bar-Ilan University)! Last year team Bi-Forward (School of Engineering) was qualified too (24 out of 33 teams qualified back then). These two teams are the only Israeli teams that have been accepted to the KSL league. Unfortunately, last year the competition took place in Turkey and all Israeli teams were forbidden from traveling due to a travel warning.
The team supervising leader is Dr. Eli Kolberg from the Engineering Faculty. Being accepted to this competition is considered a considerable achievement for any university. Our team will compete against teams from universities from USA, Japan, Europe, and Asia.
This year it will be the first time that a team from an Israeli university will compete in the KSL league,
The web site of RoBIU team is: http://www.eng.biu.ac.il/~millery/robocup
Dr. Eli Kolberg