RoboCup 2018 is set to take place in Montreal from June 18 to 22 at the Palais des Congres. Around 4000 participants from 35 countries will compete in a variety of challenges to see which robots are the most versatile and intelligent. The event started in 1996 and has grown considerably in size and scope. Organizers have divided the event into two main sections, Junior and Major, each with their own lists of competitions.

RoboCup Federation is a reputable international scientific initiative with the goal to advance the state of the art of intelligent robots. When established in 1997, the original mission was to field a team of robots capable of winning against the human soccer World Cup champions by 2050. Today, the federation still holds this dream, however, the necessary technologies to accomplish these landmark projects in Artificial Intelligence take dedication, much research and development.

RoboCup Junior

Onstage

RoboCup Junior OnStage invites teams to develop a creative stage performance using autonomous robots that they have designed, built and programmed. The objective is to create a robotic performance between 1 to 2 minutes that uses technology to engage an audience. 

Rescue

The Rescue league is split into three sections: line following, maze solving and simulation navigation. Participants who have entries in all three stand a strong chance of creating a robot for the Major rescue competition later. This competition is targeted to primary and secondary students. The robots are complex and small. Students must make use of onboard sensors to detect and navigate, as well as carry out the required mission.

• Line

An autonomous robot should follow a black line while overcoming different problems in a modular arena formed by tiles with different patterns. The floor is white in color and the tiles are on different levels connected with ramps.

• Maze

The terrain is simply too dangerous for humans to reach the victims. Your team has been given a difficult task. The robot must be able to carry out the rescue mission in a fully autonomous mode with no human assistance. The robot must be durable and intelligent enough to navigate through treacherous terrain with hills, uneven land and rubble without getting stuck.

• Simulation

Teams have to develop and program appropriate strategies for both real and virtual autonomous robots to navigate through the worlds to collect objects while competing with another team’s robot that is also searching and collecting objects in the same real and virtual worlds.

Soccer

The Junior soccer league not only helps students show off their robot building and programming skills, but also their knowledge and skills at soccer and team play.

In the RoboCupJunior soccer league, a team of two autonomous mobile robots competes against another team in matches. 2-on-2 teams of autonomous mobile robots play in a highly dynamic environment, tracking a special light-emitting or passive ball in an enclosed, landmarked field. 

RoboCup Major

@Home

The @home challenge is quite different from what most people associate with RoboCup in that the focus is not a sport, nor even a structured task, but rather an unstructured, previously unexplored environment and the need to succeed at a wide variety of tasks. The emphasis is the ability to autonomously assist humans in situations like in a grocery store. The mobile robots make use of one or more arms to pick up and manipulate objects.

The RoboCup@Home league aims to develop service and assistive robot technology with high relevance for future personal domestic applications. It is the largest international annual competition for autonomous service robots and is part of the RoboCup initiative. 

RoboCup Industrial

A natural extension of the @home challenge is the industrial challenge. This league covers both robots which provide manufacturing services (standardized on the FESTO Robotino platform), as well as robots which help in the workplace.

• @Work

The RoboCup@Work is the newest league in RoboCup, targeting the use of robots in work-related scenarios. The robots in this league utilize proven ideas and concepts from other RoboCup competitions to tackle open research challenges in industrial and service robotics.

• RoboCupLogistics

The RoboCup Logistics League is an application driven league inspired by the industrial scenario of a smart factory, where a number of machines provide manufacturing services to refine, assemble, or modify a workpiece eventually resulting in a final product.

RoboCup RESCUE

The Rescue league involves robots which are considerably larger and more versatile their junior counterparts. Correspondingly, the tasks are considerably more difficult. There is both a physical robot challenge as well as a simulation challenge.

• Robot

Robot rescue challenge assists first responders in assessing an emergency situation such as searching for potential victims and provide an automated map of an environment with uneven terrain, stairs and navigating through doorways.

• Simulation

The purpose of the RoboCup Rescue Simulation 2D and 3D league is twofold. First, it aims to develop simulators that form the infrastructure of the simulation system and emulate realistic phenomena predominant in disasters.

RoboCup Soccer

Soccer is the sport which most people think about when they hear about RoboCup. The objective is to create a team of robots able to compete and win against human players. Full-scale humanoid robots are still incredibly expensive, so in order to ensure the competition is accessible, and focus on the software needed, the organizers have subdivided this league into simulation, small, medium and large sized robots. There is also a standard platform using SoftBank's NAO humanoid robot which teams can make use of.

The main focus of the RoboCup competitions is the game of football/soccer, where the research goals concern cooperative multi-robot and multi-agent systems in dynamic adversarial environments. All robots in this league are fully autonomous.

• Humanoid
• Standard Platform
• Middle Size
• Small Size
• Simulation

Have you attended a RoboCup event in the past, or are you planning to attend RoboCup 2018? Tell us your thoughts in the comments section below.   Sources robocup.org/ robocup2018.org