RoboCup is an international research and education initiative. Its goal is to foster artificial intelligence and robotics research by providing a standard problem where a wide range of technologies can be examined and integrated.

The ultimate stated goal of the RoboCup project is "By the year 2050, develop a team of fully autonomous humanoid robots that can win against the human world soccer champion team".

Our research objectives in this project are twofold: first to apply intelligent techniques in the Humanoid League domain, and second to use that domain as a test bed to develop solutions for wider application in other research areas.

The NUbots achieved a third place at RoboCup 2002 in Fukuoka, Japan, at RoboCup 2003 in Padua, Italy, at RoboCup 2004 in Lisbon, Portugal, and a second place at RoboCup 2005 in Osaka. In 2006 the NUbots became world champions in the RoboCup Four-Legged League at RoboCup 2006 in Bremen, Germany. Historically the year 2006 marked 50 years of artificial intelligence research and about 10 year since the idea of RoboCup was conceived. With the announcement of the end of the production of the AIBO ers-7 robot early in 2006 the year 2006 can be regarded as the peak of the four-legged league competition with AIBO robots. After 2006 the focus of attention shifted to alternative robot platforms such as the robot bear and finally Humanoid robots.