RoboCup
is an international research and education initiative, attempting to foster Artificial Intelligence and Robotics research by providing a standard problem where a wide range of technologies can be integrated and examined, as well as being used for integrated project-oriented education.
For this purpose, RoboCup chose to use the soccer game as a primary domain, and organizes every year The Robot World Cup Soccer Games and Conferences. Since 2000, the competitions include Search and Rescue robots as well.
The RoboCup Federation proposed the ultimate goal of the RoboCup Initiative to be stated as follows: "By 2050, a team of fully autonomous humanoid robot soccer players shall win a soccer game, complying with the official FIFA rules, against the winner of the most recent World Cup of Human Soccer."
In order for a robot team to actually perform a soccer game, various technologies must be incorporated, including: autonomous agents design principles, multi-agent collaboration, real-time planning and control, robotics, and sensor-fusion.
The Israeli National RoboCup Commitee
The Israel national RoboCup committee is responsible for:
Manage qualification for RoboCup leagues when slots are limited. The qualification will be based on the results from the corresponding national competition but will also consider other criteria related to the technical quality and number of participants.
Serve as a point of contact for local RoboCup events.
Promote RoboCup within Israel.
Maintain RoboCup standards for scientific research and education within Israel and uphold the RoboCup mission of sharing advances through friendly competition.
Maintain an English website to be linked to the main RoboCup website describing the RoboCup activities in Israel.
Members of Israeli National Committee
The following is the list of the current committee members. Please contact the responsible for your league or the chair for general questions concerning RoboCup in Israel.
RoboCup includes a number of different robot soccer leagues that focus on different research challenges. In all,
however, the robots are fully autonomous, and work without any external intervention by a human being.
Israel currently participates in the Standard Platform League (SPL, intended for university students and researchers),
and in the Junior league (intended for primary and secondary school students).
The Standard Platfore League (SPL) is a RoboCup robot soccer league, in which all teams compete with identical robots. The competition, therefore, is over
the best software. The current standard platform is the humanoid NAO by
Aldebaran Robotics.
Team BURST (Bar-Ilan University RoboCup Soccer Team) is the first
Israeli team to participate in RoboCup in any of the senior (university) leagues. It has participated for the first time
in 2009, and rose to the respectable top-16 stage.
The Israeli RoboCup Junior (RCJ) competitions (Chair: Dr. Eli Kolberg)
The RCJ competition is composed of three competitions: Soccer, Dance and Rescue.
There are two age groups which compete separately in the above competitions: primary schools and secondary schools.
The Soccer Competition is a competition for youths to design, program and strategies autonomous soccer-playing robots.
The Rescue Competition is a platform which involves youths programming autonomous robots to rescue "victims" in disaster scenarios.
The Dance Competition is a competition in which youths create dancing robots which, dressed in costumes, move in creative harmony to music.
It is a new and exciting way to understand science and technology through hands-on experiences with electronics, hardware and software. RoboCupJunior also offers opportunities to learn about teamwork while sharing ideas with friends. The development of study materials and innovative teaching methods are among RoboCupJunior's aims.
RoboCup Organization
Links to the current structure of the RoboCup Federation, as well as to other RoboCup National Committees, can be found at
http://www.RoboCup.org/overview/24.html .
For this purpose, RoboCup chose to use the soccer game as a primary domain, and organizes every year The Robot World Cup Soccer Games and Conferences. Since 2000, the competitions include Search and Rescue robots as well.
Dr. Eli Kolberg,
Bar Ilan University
Engineering School (general chair of national committee and Junior competitions).
