RoboCup is an international joint project to promote artificial intelligence (AI), mobile robotics, and related field. It is an attempt to foster AI and robotics research by providing a standard problem where wide range of technologies can be integrated and examined. RoboCup chose to use soccer game as a central topic of research, aiming at innovations to be applied for socially significant problems and industries.

The ultimate goal of the RoboCup project is By 2050, develop a team of fully autonomous humanoid robots that can win against the human world champion team in soccer.
In order for a robot team to actually perform a soccer game, various technologies must be incorporated including: design principles of autonomous agents, multi-agent collaboration, strategy acquisition, real-time sensor data processing, real-time reasoning, robotics, and sensor-fusion. RoboCup is a task for a team of multiple fast-moving robots under a dynamic environment.
One of the major application of RoboCup technologies is search and rescue in large scale disaster. RoboCup initiated a RoboCup Rescue project to specifically promote research in socially significant issues. (Source: Robocup German Open)
At the middle size league (MSL) middle-sized robots of no more than 52 cm diameter and 80 cm height play soccer in teams of up to 6 robots with a colored soccer ball on a field the size of 12×18 metres. Matches are divided in 15-minute halves. All sensors are on-board. Robots can use wireless networking to communicate.