RoboCup 2003

RoboCup 2003, the 7th Robot World Cup Soccer and Rescue Competitions and Conferences, was held at PadovaFiere, in Padua, Italy during July 2-11, 2003. Following the trend established in recent years, the competition continued to grow, with 244 teams from 30 countries making up the 1244 participants. These teams were distributed across di?erent leagues, where each league conducted one or more competitions. The league reports contained in this book summarize the scienti?c advancements made in each league as well as the results of the competition. Additionally, the supplementalCDcoupledwiththis bookcontains theTeamDescriptionPapersforeachteamcompetinginRoboCup. Theleagues, in alphabetical order, were: - RoboCup Humanoid League - RoboCup Junior League soccer, rescue, and dance competition - RoboCup Legged League - RoboCup Middle-Size League - RoboCup Rescue Real Robot League - RoboCup Rescue Simulation League - RoboCup Simulation League soccer, coach, and visualization competition - RoboCup Small-Size League This bookbeginswith anoverviewoverthe RoboCupcompetition together with a vision statement for the future development of RoboCup until 2050 and three invited papers by internationally leading researchers of the robotics ?eld. The core part of the book contains papers accepted for oral or poster presentation at the International RoboCup Symposium 2003, which was held directly after the RoboCup competitions. The RoboCup team descriptions which, traditionally, have been part of the proceedings are now provided on a supplementary CD. This enabled us to allocate signi?cantly more space for the fast-growing number of participating teams, thus rendering the team descriptions more informative and thus valuable.