Benefits of RoboCup

For Research and Development

RoboCup teams work on interdisciplinary scientific problems related to to robotics, artificial intelligence, computer science and engineering.

The RoboCup community has so far published thousands of scientific publications at internationally renowned conferences and scientific journals. RoboCup organizes its own annual RoboCup Symposium.

Several competitions in RoboCup highlight the immediate benefits of robotics for industry, the economy, and our every-day life:

• Rescue robots in disaster response
• Service robots providing assistive services to people
• Mobile robots for logistics, materials flows and transport systems
• Cooperative robots for performing complex tasks in industrial settings

For Science and Society

The basic technology of Kiva Systems – a mobile robotic fulfilment system – was born out of the Small Size League. Amazon acquired Kiva Systems in 2012 for more than 700 million USD.

French-based SoftBank Robotics launched their successful humanoid Nao robots in RoboCup as successor to Sony’s AIBO. Japanese investor Softbank bought into SoftBank Robotics in 2013 with a 120 million USD investment, and has recently taken over the company completely.

Motors built by Korean company ROBOTIS, now used in research projects world-wide, found their first major user community in RoboCup. Their commercial DARwIn robot was conceived in collaboration with a team in the Humanoid League.

Open source solutions developed by RoboCup teams are used by research groups and companies all over the world.

The Japanese robot Quince, deployed in Fukushima in 2011, had previously been tested in RoboCup Rescue.