A core objective of RoboCup is to promote and advance robotics and AI research through the challenges offered by its various leagues. The ultimate goal of the soccer competition is that, by 2050, a team of fully autonomous humanoid robots will defeat the most recent winner of the FIFA World Cup. To bring this vision closer to reality, the RoboCup Federation has announced several changes to the leagues . We spoke with Alessandra Rossi, a trustee who has been involved in the humanoid soccer league for many years, to learn more. Could you start by introducing yourself and tell us how you've been involved in RoboCup throughout the years, because you've been involved in so many aspects of the competition!

A screenshot from the new simulator that will be trialled for a special challenge at RoboCup2025. The annual RoboCup event, where teams gather from across the globe to take part in competitions across a number of leagues, will this year take place in Brazil, from 15-21 July. In advance of kick-off, we spoke to two members of the RoboCup Soccer 3D Simulation League: Executive Committee Member Klaus Dorer, and Stefan Glaser, who is on the Maintenance Committee and who has been recently developing a new simulator for the League. Could start by just giving us a quick introduction to the Simulation League? Klaus Dorer: There are two Simulation Leagues in Soccer: the 2D Simulation League and the 3D Simulation League. The 2D Simulation League, as the name suggests, is a flat league where the players and ball are simulated with simplified physics and the main focus is on team strategy.

Beating the human world champions by 2050 is an ambitious goal of the Humanoid League that provides a strong incentive for RoboCup teams to further improve and develop their systems. In this paper, we present upgrades of our system which enabled our team NimbRo to win the Soccer Tournament, the Drop-in Games, and the Technical Challenges in the Humanoid AdultSize League of RoboCup 2022. Strong performance in these competitions resulted in the Best Humanoid award in the Humanoid League. The mentioned upgrades include: hardware upgrade of the vision module, balanced walking with Capture Steps, and the introduction of phase-based in-walk kicks.

As part of RoboCup 2021, events in the Humanoid League will be taking place virtually from 24-27 June. In the Humanoid League, autonomous robots with a human-like body plan and human-like senses play soccer against each other. We spoke to Maike Paetzel-Prüsmann, who serves on the executive and organising committees, about the league, how the competition usually works in the physical environment, and the changes they've made to the event so that it can be held virtually. In the Humanoid League there are very specific rules regarding what the robots need to look like. To make them as human-like as possible, there are a lot of constraints around how they look and how they can sense their environment.

On any other soccer field it might be considered a disaster. The forwards keep getting calls against them. The goalie falls over when the ball isn't even near the net. As for the striker -- well let's just say he won't be rushed when he lines up to kick the ball. It's RoboCup 2013 and what it is championing is robotic technology and artificial intelligence.