The competition comprises a number of leagues, and among them is RoboCupJunior, which is designed to introduce RoboCup to school children, with the focus being on education. There are three sub-leagues: Soccer, Rescue and OnStage. Marek Šuppa serves on the Executive Committee for RoboCupJunior, and he told us about the competition this year and the latest developments in the Soccer league. I started with RoboCupJunior quite a while ago: my first international competition was in 2009 in Graz, where I was lucky enough to compete in Soccer for the first time. Our team didn't do all that well in that event but RoboCup made a deep impression and so I stayed around: first as a competitor and later to help organise the RoboCupJunior Soccer league. Right now I am serving as part of the RoboCupJunior Execs who are responsible for the organisation of RoboCupJunior as a whole.

Many of us have experienced the future in the past year and the opportunity to rapidly integrate artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics--not just as tools, but as teammates--to help future-focused organizations turn their teams into "superteams." Transforming teams into superteams by using insights from AI is still an emerging strategy, in part because many organizations continue to view technology narrowly as a tool or enabler instead of as a team member and collaborator. At the same time, applying AI to a superteam's work can free human workers to engage better, find more opportunity to innovate, and bring more creative value to their organizations. Your tools can help people collaborate in teams, break down silos among functions and businesses, create knowledge, learn in the flow of work, and personalize and humanize the work experience.

Covid-19 has been more than an accelerator into the future; it's brought a dramatic shift to new ways of working. Many of us have experienced the future in the past year and the opportunity to rapidly integrate artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics--not just as tools, but as teammates--to help future-focused organizations turn their teams into "superteams." Thomas Malone, author of Superminds, posited the idea of superteams, which pair people and technology, using their complementary capabilities to re-architect work in more human ways and contribute to new and better outcomes at speeds and scales not otherwise possible. Transforming teams into superteams by using insights from AI is still an emerging strategy, in part because many organizations continue to view technology narrowly as a tool or enabler instead of as a team member and collaborator. In Deloitte's 2021 Global Human Capital Trends report, based on a survey of 6,000 global respondents (more than 60% representing executive-level leaders), only 16% of respondents say they are now transforming or will transform work by building portfolios of humans and machines working together.

The wait is over: artificial intelligence (AI) is here. And despite apocalyptic predictions about workers being replaced by intelligent machines, leading organizations are taking a new tack: actively searching for strategies to integrate AI into teams to produce transformative business results. These "superteams" hold the promise of enabling organizations to reinvent themselves to create new value and meaning, while giving workers the potential to reinvent their careers in ways that help increase their value to the organization and their own employability. For organizations that still view AI mainly as an automation tool to reduce costs, connecting their AI initiatives with their efforts to craft more effective teams is a first step toward enabling humans and machines to work together in new, more productive ways. The Readiness Gap: Fifty-nine percent of organizations say the redesign of jobs to integrate AI technology is important or very important for their success over the next 12 to 18 months, but only 7 percent say they are very ready to address this trend.