Newton Research Labs is the proud winner of the first International Micro Robot World Cup Soccer Tournament (MIROSOT) held by KAIST in Taejon, Korea, in November of 1996. We used our Cognachrome Vision System to track our three robots (position and orientation), the soccer ball, and the three opposing robots. The 60 Hertz update rate from the vision system was instrumental in our success; other teams obtained robot and ball position data in the 2 to 10 Hertz range.
The contest attracted worldwide press coverage, including coverage from CNN.
Because of the small size of the robots (each fit into a cube 7.5cm on a side), we opted for a single vision system connected to a camera facing down on the field, instead of a vision system in each robot.
If you are interested in learning more about the technical details of our entry, we are currently writing a paper that describes our soccer-playing team in detail, and we are happy to provide (unsupported!) source code for our winning entry to anyone who asks.
There are currently two different robot soccer contests:
MIROSOT (Micro Robot World Cup Soccer Tournament) is organized by Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST). The first contest, held in November 1996, was a great success. Over twenty teams came from around the world to compete. The second annual MIROSOT will be held June 1-5, 1997, again at KAIST in Taejon, South Korea.
RoboCup is organized by the International Committee for RoboCup. Its first contest was held at IJCAI (August 23-29, 1997, in Nagoya, Japan). This contest had two different size divisions for robots (both larger than robots for MIROSOT), and also a separate, "simulated" contest for software-only entrants.