RoboCup-97: The First Robot World Cup Soccer Games and Conferences

Games and Conferences, was held at the Fifteenth International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence. There were two leagues: (1) real robot and (2) simulation. Ten teams participated in the realrobot league and 29 teams in the simulation league. Over 150 researchers attended the technical workshop. The world champions are CMUNITED (Carnegie Mellon University) for the small-size league, DREAMTEAM (University of Southern California) and TRACKIES (Osaka University, Japan) for the middle-size league, and AT-HUMBOLDT (Humboldt University) for the simulation league. The Scientific Challenge Award was given to Sean Luke (University of Maryland) for his genetic programming–based simulation team LUKE, and the Engineering Challenge Awards were given to UTTORI UNITED (Utsunomiya University, Toyo University, and Riken, Japan) and RMIT (Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, Australia) for designing novel omnidirectional driving mechanisms. Over 5000 spectators and 70 international media covered the competition worldwide. RoboCup-98, the Second Robot World Cup Soccer, was held in conjunction with the Third International Conference on Multiagent Systems in Paris, France, in July 1998.