RoboCup 2017 Returns to Tehran

EghtesadOnline: The 12th RoboCup IranOpen concluded on Friday with hundreds of enthusiasts testing their hardware against international rivals.

News ID: ۷۴۰۸۱۶

08 April 2017

According to the RoboCup website, the event’s aim is to advance the ‘state of the art’ in artificial intelligence.

More than 2,820 competitors from North and South America, Europe and Asia took part this year with the independently designed robots, Tasnim News Agency and Spain’s EFE reported on April 7.

The event was organized in conjunction with Azad University Qazvin, with support from several local and foreign universities, Financial Tribune reported.

The competitions included several leagues, namely rescue, industrial, aerial and mine detecting robots, as well as robotic soccer. The winners of various leagues were announced in a ceremony held at Tehran’s Permanent Fairgrounds later on Friday.

The first RoboCup IranOpen took place in April 2006, Morteza Mousakhani, the chairman of the National Robocop Committee said, adding that “139 Iranian teams and 21 foreign groups will compete at the university level, while another 39 Iranian teams and 15 foreign teams entered the competitions.”

Winning teams in the Iranian round will automatically go for the Asia finals later in the year.

The RoboCup Standard Platform League is a RoboCup robot soccer league, in which all teams compete with identical robots.

Small Soccer Robots

Small-size robot soccer, or F180, focuses on the problem of intelligent multi-agent cooperation and control in a highly dynamic environment with a hybrid centralized/distributed system.

Meanwhile, another type of robot, the 3D/2D made an appearance again at this year’s show with several competitors from Europe and Asia vying for the top prize.

Robotic science has become a favorite area with Iranian university students who have won titles in AI and robotics competitions in and outside Iran.

RoboCup was set up with the aim of creating, by 2050, a team of humanoid robots that can take on and beat the best human players.

The competition aims to encourage innovation in robot building by getting engineers to tackle the problems that playing football entails.

The robots must act autonomously and can communicate via Wi-Fi.

This year’s event was sponsored by several Iranian banks and credit institutions, e-commerce stores, the Iranian Red Crescent, Tehran Municipality, Unilever and Parsian Hotel Group.

The finals of the 2017 RoboCup will be held in July in Japan, with the finalists from the Iranian round battling it out to become Robo-champion of the year.