If you ever find yourself bored between Football World Cups, remember the RoboCup takes place every year. Created in 1996, this international robotics tournament has a “simple” objective: to create a robotic football team by 2050 that’s capable of beating the human world champions. Since its first instalment, the competition has been a real success – while there were just 38 teams in 1997, by 2021 there were 317 teams competing across all events. And it has to be said, there’s nothing like a bit of competition to advance research in the field of robotics.