MENA House: Egypt wins the Robocup (Robot Soccer World Cup) 2010

The German university of Cairo Pharoahs (GUC) came first place beating robOTTO (University of Magdeberg, Germany) in the final and winning the World Cup in Robotics and Artificial Intelligence known as RoboCup within the Festo Logistics League. This year RoboCup 2010 took place in Singapore from 19th -25th June 2010.

The GUC team was the only team participating from Africa, the Arab World and the Middle East. It is their first year to participate in the Robot games since its introduction to the international scene in 1997.  Participants ranged from Germany, Switzerland, Hungary, Taiwan, South Korea, Singapore and Egypt among others.  A total of 500 teams entered the competition from 40 different countries.   

The Robocup is similar to the world cup, but with robots.  The Robocup is an international competition which was founded in 1997 (with a pre-trila robotcup held in Japan in 1996 for domestic teams).  The competition and conference is designed for participants to test advanced robotics and Artificial Intelligence on a playing field.  Most participants are Undergrads, postgraduates and PhD holders who focus their research on this particular field.  

The Robocup objective is:

To creat a team of full autonomous humanoid robot football players who can play and beat the winners of the most recent (human) world cup, complying with official FIFA rules, by the year 2050.

Members of the GUC team consisted a variety of Undergrads, Postgrads and PhDs.  In fact, the Egyptian representatives were the only team to encoorporate undergraduates into their team.  A risky, but successful move paid off.  Team GUC Pharoahs consisted of: Ahmed Hani, Yomna Gamal, Mustapha Abdullah, Summer Kassem, Hesham Raouf and Nehal Hassan. The team was supervised by Prof. Dr. Hani Hagras, Dr. Rabie Ramadan, Dr. Hisham Elsherif and Engineer Mosutafa Nawito.

The GUC team played two group stages before going on to play in the Semi finals and then the finals of the Robocup.  Teams in their group included: The University of Bern, Switzerland and two teams from Singapore polytechnic and Nanyang Technology University, Singapore. In the second group stages, the GUC team went on to play against their group in the 2nd round which included The University of Magdeburg (Germany) and KAIST (South Korea). The GUC team then went on to beat Hungary in the Semi Final before beating the University of Magdeburg (Germany) in the final to be crowned as World Champions in Robocup 2010.

While it may seem iroic that the German University of Cairo beat representatives from of Germany, The University of Magdeberg, we look forward to the day when Egypt can once again, qualify to play in the (human) world cup and maybe, potentially, win. 

Congratulations to the GUC Pharaohs!