RoboCup: New Scientific and Technical Advancements

1. Enrico Pagello Vice-President of the International RoboCup Federation RoboCup: New Scientific and Technical Advancements IAS-Lab Intelligent Autonomous Systems The University of Padua

2. Presentation Outline • Why RoboCup • RoboCup at beginning: 1997-2000 • League organization: old and new • RoboCup-2003 report • The site, the people, the robots • Competition results • RoboCup research at IAS-Lab, in Padua • Scientific perspective of RoboCup

3. Why roboCup ?H. Kitano (Ed.), RoboCup: The First Step, Special Issue of Artificial Intelligence, June 1999 • Landmark Project: • Difficult enough to generate innovations and technical breakthroughs • Enough feasible to allow a first step • Able to generate technologies that could meet next generation of industries • Widely appealing and exciting • Ultimate Goal • To beat the World-champion Human Team by a Team of 11 Humanoids

4. RoboCup Soccer : (1/5)The oldest RoboCup standard problem • Different Leagues provide different research challenges for multi-robot systems in complex environments • Simulation League • No Hardware limitations • Multi-agent coordination and high level strategies • Small-size League • Miniaturized Hardware • Centralized control

5. RoboCup Soccer : (2/5)The oldest RoboCup standard problem • Middle-size League • Building, maintaining, and programming a team of fully autonomous robots • High speed moving (>2m/s) • Large field (12m X 8 m) • Sensing the environment • Cooperation abilities

6. RoboCup Soccer : (3/5)The oldest RoboCup standard problem • Middle-size League: progresses from 1997 to 2003 USC (USA) - Osaka Univ. (Japan) Nagoya 1997 Isfahan Univ (Iran) - AIS (Germany) Padua 2003

7. RoboCup Soccer : (4/5)The oldest RoboCup standard problem • Four-Legged League • Stable, reliable and standardized Hardware • Software development • Local sensor processing • Cooperation abilities

8. RoboCup Soccer : (5/5)The oldest RoboCup standard problem • Humanoid League • Commercial platforms OR Home-designed robots • Today, only limited different ability challenges: • Walking • Standing on one leg • Penalty kick • Free style • VERY CHALLENGING !!!

9. The new RoboCup categories:The Rescue activity • We chose Urban Search and Rescue (USAR Application) as a secondary domain for RoboCup, because it is a socially significant real-world domain, but also because ...

10. RoboCup Rescue versus Soccer… because • There are certain similarities beween Rescue and Soccer: • unpredictability, • hard real-time, • heterogeneous teams, • emergent cooperation, • distributed simulation, etc. • Other USAR features are missing in Soccer: • long-term strategy planning logistic, • interaction with human agents, • robot-based map construction, • sophisticated networking technology, • 3D odometry, etc

11. General research issues were introduced into RoboCup since the beginning (1997) • Each league has its own architectural constraints. • Research issues are slightly different one to another. • For simulated leagues; • Teamwork among agents • Agent modelling, from primitive skills to complex ones • Multi-agent learning, for on-line and off-line learning of simple skills, as well as more complex strategy . . . . . • For real leagues: • Real-time global or distributed perception from different sensing sources • Individual mechanical skills of the phisical robots • Strategic navigation and actions . . . . .

12. RoboCup and education:Benefit of RoboCup - The Junior League • There are large benefits for education from promoting RoboCup among young people • RoboCup Junior has an important role for the advancement of science and education

13. RoboCup members The participating universities and research organizations have been increasing all over the world year by year Major universities & Research Organizations McGill Univ. St. Petersburg State Technical Univ. Berlin Free Univ. Padova Univ. Uppsala Univ. Essex Univ. Labo de Robotique de Versailles Roma Univ. Orebro Univ. Humboldt Univ. Porto Univ. Mainz Univ. Osnabrueck Univ. Koblenz-landau Univ. etc. Carnegie Mellon Univ. Beijing Institute of Tech. China Science & Tech Univ. Cambridge Univ. South California Univ. Tokyo Univ. Keio Univ. Waseda Univ. Erato Kitano Project Osaka Univ. Etc. Sheriff Tech Univ. India Tech Univ. Cornell Univ. etc. Georgia Tech Univ. Pennsylvania Univ. Washington Univ. etc. Melbourne Univ. NSW Univ. Queensland Univ. Auckland Univ. etc.

14. The RoboCup Federation The RoboCup Federation A Non-Profit Organization registered in Switzerland and composed of top AI researchers in the world Board of Trustee Prof. E. Pagello Vice President Padua Univ., Italy Dr. H. Kitano Founding President Sony Co., Tokyo Japan Composed of 11 core board members Prof. M. Veloso Vice President CMU, USA Prof. M. Asada President Osaka Univ. Japan Executive Committee Composed of persons responsible for each league National Committee Japan Singapore USA Germany Italy France Netherlands Scandinavia

15. RoboCup2002 @ Fukuoka-Dome:Middle-size fields and lab area 11,000 sq m

16. RoboCup2003 @ PadovaFiere:Middle-size fields and lab area: 8.,500 sq m

17. Classification of Teams by country @RoboCup2003

18. Team growth 1997-2003

19. Junior League:RoboCup 2003 competitions • This year competition had • One-on-one soccer • Two-on-two soccer • Dance • Rescue

20. Junior League:RoboCup 2003 dance performances • Dance challenge can help to reduce the gender gap, and allow more female students to join RoboCup

21. Junior League:RoboCup 2003 U-league experiments • U-League was created in answer to the call of develop stepping stones from RoboCup junior and senior RoboCup Leagues

22. Junior League:RoboCup 2003 Rescue set • Junior rescue was redesigned and re-introduced, on 2003, as a miniature version of the NIST Rescue Arenas • The RCJ Rescue set-up looks almost like a doll’s house, and the robot had to follow a line through the house search for victims