We are in the early days of RoboCup [#!kitano1995:robocup!#], with
half a century to go before we can ``...build a team
of robot soccer players, which can beat a human world cup champion
team'' ([#!RoboCup97-proceedings!#],
). The challenge posed by
the goal is enormous and inspires hundreds of researchers yearly
throughout the world to engage themselves and their students in
RoboCup. RoboCup has been used as a research challenge in
parallel with a usage for educational purposes, and to stimulate the
interest of the public for robotics and artificial intelligence
(AI). Each year since 1997, researchers from different countries
have gathered to play the world cup. The event has drawn an
increasing amount of interest from the public, as robotics is still
not commonplace.
The intention of this manual is to guide the developers
of simulated league teams in the beginning steps, and also serve as a
reference manual for the experienced users.