The Soccer World Cup

The Robot Soccer World Cup is divided into five divisions, starting with the Simulation league. This is for sophisticated computer games without the robot hardware, but with each team comprising eleven autonomous software programs called agents. The Small Robot league is five-aside on a 6.05 x 4.05m ‘field’, while the Middle Size Robot league plays teams of six on an 18 x 12m field. The Humanoid league caters for autonomous robots with a human-like body plan that e programmed with senses that duplicate those of real people. In this league, unlike the smaller ones above, the tasks of perception and world modeling are not simplified by programming. Then there’s the Standard Platform league, where all players have identical hardware and only the optimum computer programming can produce the winning advantage. These robots are fully autonomous on the field, having no external control. Despite the game format, Robot-cup 2010 is a serious business. Robotics teams from leading universities that include Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Harvard University, Oxford University and Osaka University are showing what the latest robot football stars can do.