Washington D.C. The ambition of the RoboCup organizers is to develop a team of fully autonomous humanoid robots that can defeat the human world soccer champions by the year 2050. So far, wheeled robots predominate. They kick the ball either by rolling into it or using specialized dribbling or kicking mechanisms very unlike human motion in controlling the ball. Currently, the Robocup competition is divided into four leagues with simplified objectives and rules, with each league trying to include various aspects of real soccer. First is a simulation league, in which a central server simulates a playing field and the game, similar to the disaster scenario simulator.
Opponents are autonomous software programs that control players in the simulation.
The simulation is detailed and strives for realism, including such factors as the stamina and limited fields of vision of human players. Second is a small-robot league. The playing field is the size of a Ping-Pong table and the ball is an orange golf ball, as noted earlier. Each team mounts a camera above the center of the field for a global view of the positions of the players and the ball, as well as the goals and the boundaries of the field. The video from the camera is processed by the team's off-field computer, which controls individual robots by radio links.