The very idea of Robot Soccer was originated in 1995 and in the month of September 1995 Professor Jong-Hwan Kim of KAIST, Korea, formally initiated an International Organizing Committee (IOC) for Micro-Robot World Cup Soccer Tournament (MiroSot). A summer camp (pre-meeting) on MiroSot was held in KAIST during July 29 - August 4, 1996, in which 30 teams from 13 countries attended. The MiroSot game rules were given a clear shape in the same meeting. The first MiroSot'96 was held in KAIST, between November 9 and 12, 1996. Twenty three (23) teams from 10 countries participated in the same. The Newton team from Newton Research Laboratories, Seattle USA, won the first prize in MiroSot, followed by SOTY from KAIST, Korea.

The second MiroSot was held at KAIST, during June 1-5, 1997 with 22 teams from 9 countries. Newton team became the world champion for the second time with the OverDrive from KAIST as the runner-up. The UFO from MaroTech, Korea was placed first in the S-MiroSot (single MiroSot) category followed by MIRAGE from KAIST, Korea.

Related research results on robot soccer are available from the workshop proceedings of MiroSot'96 and MiroSot'97 edited by Jong-Hwan Kim. The Journal of Robotics and Autonomous Systems has published a special issue on MiroSot'97.

FIRA hosted the FIRA Robot World Cup France'98 in Paris at the La cite des Sciences et de I'Industrie, Paris, between June 29 and July 3, 1998. Competitions were held in MiroSot, NaroSot (Nano Robot World Cup Soccer Tournament) and S-KheperaSot (Single-Khepera World Cup Soccer Tournament). The FIRA Robot World Cup France'98 witnessed the smallest robots ever to play the game of soccer between the SOTY and the BEST teams from Korea. It was the NaroSot category with robots sized 4 (cm) x 4 (cm) x 5.5 (cm). Teams from Denmark and USA competed for the S-KheperaSot. In the main competition of MiroSot there were 16 teams. The Keys team from Seoul, Korea became the World Champion in the MiroSot category. The FIRA North American (May 9-14, 1998, Alaska, USA), South American (May 20-22, Campinas, Brazil), European (April 25-26, 1998, Vienna, Austria) and Asia-Pacific (May 30-31, KAIST, Korea) Regional Championships were held to select 16 teams in MiroSot and 4 teams each in NaroSot and S-KheperaSot for the Robot World Cup France'98

FIRA'98 saw very promising developments in vision technology. The MiroSot world champion Keys developed and demonstrated the superiority of their vision card that works at a speed of 60 frames in a second with a capability to recognize 255 colors. Their robots were very fast, moving at a speed of 2m/s. From 1996, the year the first MiroSot competitions were held, the vision technology and robot speeds have improved on a tremendous level. In 1996, most of the teams used vision cards working at a rate of 10 frames/second. The robot speeds were as low as 50 cm/s then.

The competitions saw a sea change in motor technology and in the area of cooperative robotics as well. The outcome of the games clearly indicated the role played by the powerful motors in winning a game. The game strategies as well found different levels of development among the participants. The interesting point noted was the teams with the same level of competence (by way of vision card and motor speeds) did show better team strategies during a game. On the other hand, when two teams with different levels of competence were competing, due to the inability of the weaker team to move as fast as that of the opponent, resulted in collisions among robots at a higher rate. As years go by, it is expected to narrow down these differences in robot competence.

The FIRA Robot World Cup Brazil'99 was held from August 4 to 8, at the gymnasium of Campinas's most traditional school, Colegio Notre Dame. Fifteen teams representing six countries from four continents, selected through regional robot soccer competitions, participated in two categories of competitions: Narosot and Mirosot. A scientific workshop was held on the evening of August 6th for the exchange and discussion of the scientific issues behind robot soccer and the applications derived from it. An estimated 3,000 people, including professionals from all areas of engineering and computer science, university professors, and graduate, undergraduate, and high school students, attended FIRA'99. FIRA'99 was proudly sponsored by Colegio Notre Dame, Sun Microsystems, 3M, and Excelsior, and supported by the Brazilian Society for Automatics. The event was organized by scientists from the following Brazilian institutions: Informatics Technology Center, Federal University of Minas Gerais, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Federal University of the Rio Grande do Sul, University of Brasilia, Pontifical Catholic University of the Rio Grande do Sul, and Federal University of Santa Catarina.

The RobotIS team from Korea won the first prize in the MiroSot category, followed by SIOR and SOTY IV (both from Koera) in the second and third positions. In the NaroSot category, RobotIT (Korea) won the first prize, followed by Y2K2 (Korea) and Olympus (Korea).

For the first time, FIRA held a benchmark competition during FIRA'99, which was aimed to:

· Set a rigorous scientific standard for research into robot soccer;
· Encourage teams to work on the same problems to allow comparison;
· Collect and publish data on robot control and ball control;
· Enable scientific analysis of the performance of teams worldwide;
· Enable any particular team to gauge its performance against these standards; and,
· Provide a simple baseline from which new scientific benchmarks can be defined.

Three benchmarks were conducted at the FIRA'99:

Benchmark 1: Ball striking: To control a single robot to move from a given initial position to strike a stationary ball. This benchmark runs three times, each time with a different initial position. The robot has 1 minute to complete the task.

Benchmark 2: Goal scoring: To control a robot to move from a given initial position to strike a stationary ball and score a goal. This benchmark runs three times, each time with a different initial position. The robot has 1 minute to complete the task.

Benchmark 3: Passing between players and shooting: To control two robots starting at given initial positions such that Robot 1 strikes the ball once, and Robot 2 strikes the moving ball once to make the ball pass over the goal line. This benchmark runs twice, each time with a different initial position. The robots have unlimited time to complete the task.

Four teams participated in the benchmark competition. The NEW NEU team from China was the best team in the benchmark classification, followed by RobotIS (Korea) and SIOR (Korea).

The FIRA'2000 was held in August 2000, in conjunction with the 2000 Olympic games, in Rockhampton, Australia. Four FIRA regional championships were organized to seed the teams for the FIRA'2000 event.

The FIRA Robot World Cup 2001 was held at the Science and Technology Museum in Beijing, China from August 1-5, 2001 along with the FIRA Robot World Congress. 65 teams took part in 8 categories.

For further details, please contact Prof. Liu Hong ( liuhong@cis.pku.edu.cn )
http://www.cis.pku.edu.cn/fira2001

2002 FIRA Robot Soccer World Championship (2002 FIRA Cup) took place in FIFA World Cup cities from May 23 to 29, 2002 one week before the 2002 FIFA World CupTM. Along with the 2002 FIRA Cup, 2002 FIRA Robot World Congress and FIRA Intelligent Robot Exhibition also took place.

2002 FIRA Cup was co-organized by the Korea Science Foundation (KSF), Korea Robot Soccer Association (KRSA), and YTN. It was held from 23 May 2002 to 29 May 2002, in the week before the 2002 FIFA World Cup.

The 2002 FIRA Cup attracted an overwhelming participation, both locally and from overseas.
A total of 207 teams from 25 countries, with over 600 professors, scientists, engineers and university students, participated in this grand event, making it the largest ever in its short history. The preliminary stages of MiroSot and SimuroSot were held at the 5 FIFA World Cup cities, namely, Busan, Daegu, Daejeon, Gwangju, and Suwon, from 23 May 2002 to 24 May 2002. The finals of MiroSot and SimuroSot, together with the other categories such as HuroSot, were held at SETEC, Seoul, from 26 May 2002 to 28 May 2002. HuroSot made its debut in this year’s FIRA Cup, and was an interesting highlight of the event.

For further details, please visit website:
2002 FIRA Cup Korea Official Site
2002 FIRA Congress Korea Official Site

2003 FIRA Cup will be held in Vienna, Austria from 28 September to 3 October, 2003.

The FIRA Robot Soccer World Cup took place at Wien Wisee, the Vienna Exhibition Center, Vienna, Austria from September 28 to October 3 2003. It was beeing organized by the Institute for Handling Devices and Robotics of the Vienna University of Technology.

There was 6 different competition categories: HuroSot, KheperaSot, MiroSot (Small, Middle and Large League), NaroSot, RoboSot and SimuroSot (Large and Middle League). 107 Teams from 22 countries participated in this Cup.

Parallel to the FIRA World Cup the FIRA World Congress was organized. On the congress the latest insights regarding mobile, cooperative, intelligent robots will be introduced and discussed. Particular emphasis was given to the applications and development in the area of entertainment/education/service/ personal robots.

For 2003 FIRA Cup, please visit website:
http://www.ihrt.tuwien.ac.at/FIRAWM03

For 2003 FIRA Congress, please visit website:
http://www.ihrt.tuwien.ac.at/FIRAWC03

2004 FIRA Cup will be held in Busan, Korea from October 27~31, 2004.

There was 6 different competition categories: HuroSot, KheperaSot, MiroSot (Small, Middle and Large League), NaroSot, RoboSot and SimuroSot (Large and Middle League). 96 Teams from 21 countries participated in this Cup.

Parallel to the FIRA World Cup the FIRA World Congress was organized. On the congress the latest insights regarding mobile, cooperative, intelligent robots will be introduced and discussed. Particular emphasis was given to the applications and development in the area of entertainment/education/service/ personal robots.

For 2004 FIRA Cup, please visit website:
http://www.fira.net

For 2004 FIRA Congress, please visit website:
http://www.fira.net/conference/2004.html