RESEARCH: RoboCup

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RoboCup

RoboCup is an annual international robotics competition proposed[1] and founded in 1996 by a group of university professors (including Hiroaki Kitano, Manuela M. Veloso, and Minoru Asada). The aim of the competition is to promote robotics and AI research by offering a publicly appealing – but formidable – challenge.

The name RoboCup is a contraction of the competition's full name, "Robot Soccer World Cup", but there are many other areas of competition such as "RoboCupRescue", "RoboCup@Home" and "RoboCupJunior". In 2019, the international competition was held in Sydney, Australia. Peter Stone is the current president of RoboCup, and has been since 2019.

“Competition pushes advances in technologies. What we learn from robots playing soccer or navigating a maze can be applied to industry and help us solve difficult real-world problems,” according to Professor Maurice Pagnucco, Head of the School of Computer Science and Engineering at UNSW.[2]