The RoboCup WM 2005 launched in Osaka, Japan. The RoboCup underlying premise is to develop robot soccer team by 2050 that can beat a human soccer team.

There are several different robot categories where robot developer teams around the globe compete in, but the most exciting is of course the humanoid robot league. The favorite of this years RoboCup is supposedly the robot called VisiON of Team Osaka (photo). This one really looks really well designed and ready for mass production. Videos of the Team Osaka soccer robot can be found here.
Heise.de (German) has some hi-res photos from the RoboCup.


More details about the RoboCup can be found here. RoboCup2005 is the official site for this years RoboCup.
We reported recently from the German RoboCup 2005.