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300 robot football teams compete for the annual RoboCup at ICC Sydney

05 Jul 2019

Sydney-siders are invited to International Convention Centre Sydney (ICC Sydney) this weekend to cheer on their local teams as RoboCup, an international automated football tournament, takes place in the city for the first time in the competition’s 22 year history.

From 04 – 07 July, over 2,000 participants from more than 300 teams representing universities and research laboratories from over 40 countries are coming together to compete in this annual competition.

Created by university professors in 1997, the event focuses on advancing Artificial Intelligence (AI) and robotics, with the aim of developing a team of robots capable of winning against the human soccer World Cup champions by 2050. In addition to taking to the soccer field, robots will also compete in industrial challenges and search and rescue competitions.

Representing Australia are five-time RoboCup champions, University of New South Wales’ (UNSW)’s team rUNSWwift,

Chair of RoboCup 2019 Organising Committee and long-time mentor to the UNSW Sydney RoboCup teams, UNSW Professor Claude Sammut said the event provided a platform to highlight and share some of Australia’s brightest robotics minds.

“Australia is highly skilled in advanced robotics and this event gives us an opportunity to truly showcase our talent to the world.

“ICC Sydney’s infrastructure and capabilities allowed us to bring this event to Sydney for the very first time, placing our local talent and knowledge on the global stage”, Sammut said.

CEO of ICC Sydney, Geoff Donaghy said hosting the global robot competition showcased Sydney’s computer science and engineering capabilities, all under the roof of the world class venue.

“It’s a proud moment for our city to have our local teams taking their robots to compete on home soil. It’s events such as RoboCup that push the advancement of technology, providing solutions to real world problems.

“We wish our local teams best of luck on the soccer field in the finals this weekend,” Donaghy said.

Finals take place on Sunday 07 July. Tickets to the event are available for the public through 2019.robocup.org.

RoboCup 2019 was won for Australia by Sydney’s specialist bidding organisation, BESydney, who led the bid to secure hosting rights along with UNSW and ICMS Australia.