Keynote Talk II

Title: RoboCup - A Challenge Problem for Artificial Intelligence

Michail G. Lagoudakis, assistant professor at the Technical University of Crete in Chania, Greece.

Abstract
The RoboCup competition is the international robotic soccer world cup organized annually since 1997. The initial conception by Hiroaki Kitano in 1993 led to the formation of the RoboCup Federation with a bold vision: By the year 2050, to develop a team of fully autonomous humanoid robots that can win against the human world soccer champions! RoboCup poses a real-world challenge for Artificial Intelligence, which requires addressing simultaneously the core problems of perception, cognition, action, and coordination under real-time constraints. In this talk, I will outline the vision, the challenges, and the contribution of the RoboCup competition in its short history. I will also offer an overview of the research efforts of team Kouretes, the RoboCup team of the Technical University of Crete, on topics ranging from complex motion design, efficient visual recognition, and self-localization to robotic software engineering, distributed communication, skill learning, and coordinated game play. My motivation is to inspire researchers and students to form teams with the goal of participating in the various leagues of this exciting and challenging benchmark competition and ultimately contributing to the advancement of the state-of-the-art in Artificial Intelligence and Robotics.

Bio
Michail G. Lagoudakis is an assistant professor with the Department of Electronic and Computer Engineering (ECE) at the Technical University of Crete (TUC) since 2005. He received his Ph.D. degree from Duke University, USA, in 2003 and was a postdoctoral researcher at the Georgia Institute of Technology, USA, until 2005. He also holds a M.Sc. degree from the University of Louisiana, Lafayette, USA (1998) and a Diploma degree from the University of Patras, Greece (1995). His research interests are mainly in Machine Learning and Robotics with extensive research experience and expertise in the area of Reinforcement Learning. Soon after his arrival at TUC, he founded "Kouretes", the first Hellenic RoboCup team, which participates in RoboCup competitions since 2006 and has already won international distinctions. Lagoudakis is a member of the RoboCup Standard Platform League Executive Committee since 2009 and was co-chair of the 13th International RoboCup Symposium held in Graz, Austria in 2009.