OSAKA -- Members of Team OSAKA bubbled over with excitement after their teammate scored a goal in a penalty-kick shootout, leading the team to victory in a sort of world soccer championship. The little goal-scorer is a 39-cm humanoid robot named VisiON.
VisiON was a star in the humanoid league in last year's international robot soccer contest, called the RoboCup, held in Lisbon in July. RoboCup 2004 was the eighth annual event of its kind. The objective is to make a team of autonomous humanoid robot players that can defeat a human World Cup champion team by 2050.
A record 346 teams from 37 countries participated in RoboCup 2004, compared with 40 teams from 10 countries in the first RoboCup championship in 1997 in Nagoya.