A team composed of students and researchers from the ISR | Lisboa was selected earlier this year to participate in RoboCup23, the “Champions League” of robotics competitions. The international competition will take place from July 4th to 10th, in Bordeaux (France) and counts on the presence of more than 2500 participants and 40 thousand visitors from several countries.

RoboCup is considered the biggest robotics competition in the world and aims to promote interest, practice, and knowledge of related sciences: mechatronics, computer science, electronics, mechanics, the internet of things, and artificial intelligence. Organized around competitive leagues that represent fields of scientific research, the event brings together thousands of researchers around a common ambition: to share knowledge and advance technical and scientific progress.

RoboCup will not be the only competition in which the team participates in 2023. They are already preparing for the National Robotics Festival, which will take place in Tomar, from April 28th to 30th, and for the euROBIN Hackathon, in Seville, from May 13th to 19th.

Carlos Azevedo, PhD student, and the team’s “captain”, explains that “SocRob’s goal is to have the best performance possible in all competitions, but the FNR and the Hackathon will serve to evaluate the algorithms in a real environment and allow the team to arrive at the RoboCup as well prepared as possible”. “Right now, we have six Master’s theses being developed within the team and these competitions help motivate and encourage knowledge sharing. In addition, they provide a very demanding testing platform, not only because it’s an environment we don’t know at first, but also because the performance is evaluated by external and impartial referees,” he adds.

SocRob@Home continuously accepts new partners and sponsors who want to help boost its activities and contribute to its ambitious mission: the first victory of a Técnico team in the RoboCup.

Published March, 2023