RoboCup-2002, the sixth international sporting and scientific event featuring autonomous soccer-playing and rescue robots of all shapes and sizes took place in Fukuoka, Japan, on June 19-25.

TsinghuaAeolus, a team from the department of Computer Science, Tsinghua University, won the competition of the final round of Simulation League again, becoming the defending gold medallists of the event.

A key goal of RoboCup, an international research and academic initiative, is to create a team of fully autonomous soccer-playing robots that will win against the human world champion soccer team by the year 2050.

The concept of robots playing soccer was first introduced in 1993, and the first official RoboCup competitions were held in 1997 in Nagoya, Japan, with 12 international teams participating. Other competitions have taken place in Paris (France), Stockholm (Sweden), Melbourne (Australia), and Seattle (USA) where 138 teams from 22 countries took part in the largest RoboCup competition to date. RoboCup 2002 promises to be even larger. This year 288 teams from 30 countries/regions, more than 1,000 researchers from 35 countries/regions are participating in various projects such as international games, conferences, research and educational programs.

RoboCup-2002 features teams of robots ranging in size from some so small that they'll compete on a ping-pong table-sized field to others the size of adult humans.

The robots met in Fukuoka Dome in four different competitions, including the Simulation League, Small-size Robot League, Middle-size Robot League and the Sony Legged Robot League. 44 teams from 14 countries became the participants of the final round.

RoboCup aims to be a landmark project, like the Apollo project in 60s, which spread the fruits of research and development activities to the society and industries. In this approach, RoboCup values its association with the corporate partners. For the year 2002, SGI, Zenrin and Sony support RoboCup activities as RoboCup Partners.

(Li Jing 11/07/2002)