Humanoid Entry Level Soccer Initiative (HELSI)

Call for Participation

The RoboCup Humanoid League invites teams to apply for participation at the RoboCup 2025 Humanoid Soccer Competition in Salvador, Brazil.

The Humanoid League will host competitions of Humanoid Entry Level Soccer Initiative (HELSI) as the bridging DEMO event between Junior and Major Leagues.

Important Dates for HELSI:

  • Submission system open: April 20th, 2025
  • Submission deadline: May 20th, 2025
  • Announcement of qualified teams: May 30th, 2025
  • Competition: July 15th – 21st, 2025, Salvador, Brazil

Teams do not need to provide a full robot team to apply for competing in the HELSI competitions. One robot can be enough. 

Participants must follow general rules as below:

Ages of students participating in teams are limited from experienced high school students of last 2 forms and under-graduated (1-2 year) university-college students. Student team members are not allowed to participate in world competitions more than 2 years. Games will be held on special carpet. The ball specified to be orange colored sponge tennis ball. Robot must be humanoid with number of D.O.F ≤ 25, weight ≤ 3.3 kg, height ≤ 60cm, with number of cameras ≤ 2. It is preferred that team members have their contribution into structure of robot. If robot is built by non-team members, then team members must perform their individual contribution into algorithms in TDP. Within tournament teams have to complete 5 challenges and participate in soccer game competition. Team can be admitted to soccer games in case of successful completing at least one of challenges. Result of challenges will be solution of tie if two teams accumulate equal number of points in soccer game competition.

If at least one junior student is a member of team, then adult mentor is mandatory in team. 

Minimum team must contain following team members: 1 junior student + mentor or 1 University student. 

Maximum team must contain: 4 students + mentor or 5 University students.

For the qualification process, teams must provide the following material:

Robot Video

Teams need to provide a video of their robot demonstrating the robots’ autonomous soccer playing skills.
The recommended skills needed for qualification are:

  • walking ability 
  • ability of getting up autonomously from a fall

We encourage teams to include in the video more complex and intelligent behavior such as demonstrating localization, and robots playing in a game, recordings from actual soccer matches are admissible. If possible, please provide footage that demonstrates the robot behavior without wires attached.

The qualification video must be supplied as a link via YouTube. The maximum duration of the video must not exceed 5 minutes. The qualifying team is responsible to ensure that the video adheres to YouTube’s TOS (especially in regard to music copyright) to prevent the video from being blocked for the reviewers. Teams that do not provide a qualification video or a viewable video will not be qualified!

Robot Specification

Regardless of the kid or adult size competition, a one-page specification (PDF) must be provided for each different type of humanoid robot used by the team that includes the following:

  • Robot picture
  • Robot name
  • Height of the robot
  • Weight of the robot
  • Walking speed in cm/s
  • Number of degrees of freedom and type of motors on each kinematic chain of the robot
  • Type of sensors used (incl. type of camera(s) and specific manufacturer part number (e.g. “6-DoF IMU” is NOT an acceptable description)) 
  • Computing unit(s)
  • Materials (e.g. Torso aluminum, legs and arms CFRP)
  • Electronics (e.g. CM730 for communicating with servos)
  • Battery (e.g. 3S1P 2200mAh LiPo)
  • Open Source link if applicable
  • Other specs

Team Description Paper (TDP)

The TDP must contain following information:

  • Names of team members with their role in team. 
  • Affiliation institution.
  • Physical postal address and phone (with WhatsApp account) of responsible member;
  • Description of robot design procedure if robot was made by team members;
  • Description of contribution into robots’ AI

TDP must contain maximum 2 pages.

The TDP must follow the LNCS format which can be downloaded from https://www.springer.com/gp/computer-science/lncs/conference-proceedings-guidelines. Teams that do to follow the LNCS formatting and style guidelines will not be qualified.

Letter of Commitment

A one-page letter addressed to the RoboCup Humanoid League Technical Committee including the following:

  •   a statement committing to participate in the RoboCup 2025 Humanoid League competition,
  •   a statement committing to make a person with sufficient knowledge of the rules available as referee during the competition.

The letter must be signed (by hand or using a digital signature software as Adobe or DocuSign) by the team leader and submitted either as a JPG, PNG or PDF file. 

The TC may include the fulfillment of the statement of commitment of participation as well as the performance of the team’s referee in previous RoboCup competitions into consideration for qualification.

Each application to the Humanoid Soccer Competition will be reviewed by two members of the Technical Committee and two other teams applying to the Humanoid Soccer Competition. The combined reviewing score will decide whether a team qualifies for participation.

Reviewing other team’s material is mandatory for teams that want to participate in the Humanoid Soccer Competition. Failing to provide an adequate review by the provided deadline will have consequences for the team’s own qualification status.

Rules

The current version of the rules may be found here at the Humanoid League website: https://humanoid.robocup.org/materials/rules/.

We expect the final version of the 2025 rules to be published in early spring 2025.

Registration

The following information is required for registration:

  • Team name
  • URL of the team’s home page
  • Name of team leader or team contact person
  • E-mail address of team leader or contact person
  • Postal address of the team, team leader or contact person
  • Robot specification file to upload
  • Team Description Paper file to upload
  • Letter of Commitment file to upload

 At least one team member must register on each team. Furthermore, teams in different categories must be able to compete, and guarantee to have members acting as referees available independently and at the same time.

Online Submission


All qualification material must be submitted online at:

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSc0LQNY5s1ezFeNR1-QlhuPNktnYPuhtcELY6ExvBUGN6Lixw/viewform?usp=header

Publication

Please note that after the announcement of the qualified teams the qualified teams submitted material will be made publicly available on the Humanoid League website. Teams applying for participation, therefore, implicitly grant the right of publication of their qualification material to the Humanoid League.

Visa Process

If you are a citizen of a country that needs a Visa for traveling to Brazil, please start the VISA process as soon as you receive your notification of qualification. If you are not sure if you’re eligible for a VISA-exempt, please consult the official website of the Brazilian government for information, at https://www.gov.br/mre/pt-br/assuntos/portal-consular/vistos/informacoes-sobre-vistos-para-estrangeiros-viajarem-ao-brasil.

For more information about the humanoid league, please refer to the humanoid league home page at https://humanoid.robocup.org/ and join the humanoid league mailing list at: https://lists.robocup.org/listinfo/robocup-humanoid