Robotic Soccer Championship RoboCup Opens in Osaka

Jul. 13–OSAKA — A weeklong robotic soccer championship known as RoboCup opened Wednesday in Osaka with 1,800 people of 333 teams from 31 countries and regions participating, as organizers of the annual event aim to create a robot soccer team that can beat the real World Cup champion team by 2050.

The robot competition featuring humanoid robots and Sony Corp.’s robot dog AIBO is being held in Japan for the third time, following the first games in Nagoya in 1997 and the fifth tournament hosted jointly by Fukuoka and South Korea’s Busan in 2002 to coincide with the real World Cup soccer finals co-hosted by the two countries.

Hitoshi Matsubara, head of the RoboCup Japanese National Committee and professor at Future University Hakodate, said at the opening ceremony, “I hope this event will be a major step forward to 2050,” referring to the goal.

In the Osaka matches, two biped autonomous robots face off against two rivals for the first time. In the previous humanoid league games, only a one-versus-one competition or a penalty shoot-out was conducted.

RoboCup Osaka 2005 has 158 attendants from 18 countries and regions in its junior league, where those aged 19 or under can take part, according to organizers.

In the junior league, participants compete in two groups — among those aged up to 14 or and those aged 15 to 19. The youngest attendants include elementary school students, they said.

Minoru Asada, president of the RoboCup Federation and engineering professor at Osaka University’s graduate school, said in a press conference late last month in Tokyo that even participants in the junior league are increasingly using autonomous robots, not remote-controlled ones.

“Some U.S. scientists predict that almost all the robot researchers in the country will have experienced RoboCup in a few years,” Asada said, stressing the significance of the event for young participants.

Asada also said developers at private companies can collect application data from the matches as participants often use robots in unexpected ways. A Sony official said attendants in the past had an AIBO robot dog crawl about on the field and make an over-the-head shot.

The RoboCup event also features a rescue league both for adult and junior participants. In the league, robots will compete in a relief scenario using artificial disaster sites and simulations.

The robotic soccer championship will be held in Bremen, Germany, next year in connection with the real World Cup soccer matches in the country.

To coincide with the soccer event, the city of Osaka is hosting the “Global Monozukuri Summit,” an international conference and trade fair bringing together 1,600 scientists and engineers from 35 countries to discuss cutting-edge technologies and promote business matchmaking.

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