Humanoid Soccer Robots

Established in 1997 the Plymouth Humanoids are UK’s leading world class robot football team.

In 2012 the Plymouth Humanoids became the first ever UK-designed robot team to compete in the RoboCup Humanoid league, which is the robotic equivalent to the football World Cup. Playing 4-a-side football the robots operate completely autonomously. They must work out where they are on the pitch, track the ball and other players using webcam vision alone. They communicate to each other using WiFi to exchange ball and goal position information, as well as to co-operate in game play.

Humanoid soccer has seen impressive progress in recent years and the aim is to develop a team of humanoid soccer players i.e. robots with human-like awareness of the game situation, motion skills, and cooperation abilities.

This poses a unique set of challenges to robotics, Artificial Intelligence (AI) research, and other fields.

The goal of the RoboCup is:

“By the middle of the 21st century, a team of fully autonomous humanoid robot soccer players shall win a soccer game, complying with the official rules of FIFA, against the winner of the most recent World Cup.”

On display 8 May – 19 July 2015