Media – FAQ

Q.Why did you create the RoboCup?
A.RoboCup was created to best promote research in the area of intelligent robotics and artificial intelligence, as well as related fields. It is NOT created to have fun by building soccer robots. RoboCup is a serious scientific project.  

Why did you choose football ?
A.Football has many aspects that next generation technologies need to embrace.
For example, team work, real-time perception and decision, physical agents, and high-level of motion control.
Also, it is the most popular sports in the world.  

Since the first edition, in 1997, and the fifth RoboCup 2001 in Seattle, researches in IA and Robotics did a lot of strides. In which domains ?
A.Very fast progress. In 97, robot did not move very well. It has difficulty finding a ball.
Now, robots reliably find a ball, move very quickly, and start showing teamwork behaviors.  

What are the applications in real life ?
A.Possible applications are in entertainment, rescue, office, and personal robots @ home.  

When do you think it will be possible to rescue people with robots ?
A.Technology-wise, it is possible to build robots that can seriously assists rescue people. In fact, a team of robot who participate in RoboCupRescue was at New York, trying to save people from World Trade Center collapse due to terrorist attack. In some sense, it is already possible.But, research will make it more effective and sophisticated. For highly effective and autonomous robots, we need 10-20 years. But, even before that, we can gradually apply technologies to real situations.At this time, the challenge of “a team of fully autonomous humanoid robots able to win against the human world soccer champions in 2050 seems incredible.  

Can you explain the reasons why you can reasonably project such an event ?
A.The Wright brother’s first flight was 1903. Apollo 11 landing on the moon was 1969. In 1947, de Havillant, British company, sold jet airliner.
ENIAC developed in 1947, and Deep Blue beat human chess champion in 1997.
Watson and Crick identified structure of DNA in 1953. human genome sequence completed in 2001.50 years is enough.  

Does it mean that in 50 years, human intelligence, human language and human mobility will be fully modelisable ?
What will be built is limited function humanoid that can outperform human capability in the defined area, soccer, but not able to do anything by itself.  

To realize this humanoid robot, what sort of problems do you have to resolve ?
A.A lot!!!!  

Are there problems you know impossible to resolve ? How to get round them ?
A.I think most of the things are possible.  

How will these future champions look like ?
A.It will be like human, but has a feature image what can clearly tell if it is a robot.