RoboCup: A Challenge Problem for AI

Kitano, Hiroaki, Asada, Minoru, Kuniyoshi, Yasuo, Noda, Itsuki, Osawa, Eiichi, Matsubara, Hitoshi

AI Magazine 

The Robot World-Cup Soccer (RoboCup) is an attempt to foster AI and intelligent robotics research by providing a standard problem where a wide range of technologies can be integrated and examined. A robot team must actually perform a soccer game, incorporating various technologies, including design principles of autonomous agents, multiagent collaboration, strategy acquisition, real-time reasoning, robotics, and sensor fusion. RoboCup is a task for a team of multiple fast-moving robots under a dynamic environment. Although RoboCup's final target is a world cup with real robots, RoboCup offers a software platform for research on the software aspects of RoboCup.