What we learned from RoboCup-97 and RoboCup-98

RoboCup is an increasingly successful attempt to promote the full integration of robotics and AI research. The most prominent feature of RoboCup is that it provides the researchers with the opportunity to demonstrate their research results as a form of competition in a dynamically changing hostile environment, defined as the international standard game definition, in which the gamut of intelligent robotics research issues are naturally involved. The article describes what we have learned from the past RoboCup activities, and overview the future perspectives of RoboCup in the next century, mainly focusing on the real robot leagues. Finally, we introduce the new leagues, one of which will have been held at RoboCup-99 in Stockholm.