History

In June 1993, a group of researchers, including Minoru Asada, Yasuo Kuniyoshi, and Hiroaki Kitano, decided to launch a robot competition, tentatively named the Robot J-League (J-League is the name of the newly established Japanese Professional soccer league). Within a month, however, they received overwhelming reactions from researchers outside of Japan, requesting that the initiative be extended as an international joint project. Accordingly, they renamed the project as the Robot World Cup Initiative, “RoboCup” for short.

During the International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI-95) held at Montreal, Canada, August, 1995, the announcement was made to organise the First Robot World Cup Soccer Games and Conferences in conjunction with IJCAI-97 Nagoya.

The first official RoboCup games and conference was held in 1997 in Nagoya, Japan with great success. Over 40 teams participated (real and simulation combined), and over 5,000 spectators attended. RoboCup was initially a university project, and it would not be until later that school students were involved.

RoboCup-99 in Stockholm exhibited the first interactive RoboCup Junior workshops using one on one soccer with pre-programmed behaviours on purpose built LEGO robots.

In the year 2000, the first international RoboCup Junior competition was held in Melbourne, Australia. The format was devised by a group of teachers and industry representatives. There were three challenges – dance, sumo, and soccer.

RoboCup Junior 2001 was held as part of Interact 2001 and was an open international competition as well as the finals for RCJA’s national competition. It was the first year to host State selection events before the National event in Melbourne. State committees were established in every state along the Eastern Seaboard of Australia. Over 200 teams and almost 1000 students competed in Australia in 2001.

During a recent visit to Australia in February, Queen Elizabeth II went to the Technology School of the Future in Adelaide and was able to see RoboCupJunior for the first time.

Students from Unley High School, (pictured) demonstrated a robot soccer game and then explained to the Queen how the robots find the ball and determine which way they are kicking. She was impressed with such young students being able to achieve the complexity of programming and high level of engineering in their robots. The Queen was also entertained by a performance of a team of choreographed dancing robots. Students from Smithfield Plains Primary school were excited at the opportunity to show their skills off to royalty and the international press entourage.

Max Striker Club was launched for members to download “heaps of cool free stuff” and enter competitions.

RoboCup State events were held in all States and ACT. The Australian competition has expanded to 464 teams with 160 teams competing at the Interact National Finals.

Did you know that instead of a silver can, robots had to rescue a Cadbury Yowie from an Australian shaped swamp!

GEN II Soccer field introduced

Rescue Tiles introduced for the first time