RoboCup: A Treasure Trove of Rich Diversity for Research Issues and Interdisciplinary Connections [TC Spotlight]

RoboCup has been a vehicle for promoting robotics and artificial intelligence (AI) research by offering a publicly appealing but formidable challenge. One effective way to promote science and engineering research is to set a challenging long-term goal. RoboCup was founded with such a goal: “By 2050, have a team of soccer robots defeat the team of World Cup champions.” Our challenging goal has been expanded to include teams of rescue robots, those that service humans at home or in manufacturing tasks, and robotics soccer, rescue, and dancing motion challenges for educating children.