The GuRoo is a 1.2m tall, 38kg humanoid robot developed at the Mobile Robotics Laboratory in the School of Information Technology and Electrical Engineering at the University of Queensland. It is used for research into a multitude of different areas including dynamic stability, human-robot interaction and machine learning. The GuRoo competes in the annual RoboCup competition. The goal of this competition is to foster the development of robotics through the annual competition of robotic soccer. It is the dream of the RoboCup federation to develop a team of fully autonomous humanoid robots, to play and beat the human world cup soccer winners in the year 2050.

The GuRoo Humanoid robotics project is now into it's third year. 2003 has been another busy year for the GuRoo project: in addition to the numerous demonstrations, it has seen the implementation of several key technological improvements.

Once again the schools presentations were very popular with over 30 schools visiting the Mobile Robots Group laboratory to see demonstrations by both the GuRoo and the RoboRoos small sized league. These presentations continue to stir the interest of young kids and hopefully inspire some to go on to become robotic engineers.

In additions to these demonstrations, the GuRoo also made several trips outside the lab including:

• Amire : Autonomous and Mini-Robots in Research and Edutainment
• Brainwaves Science Festival : National Science Week
• University Of Queensland's Innovation expo
• University of Queensland Open Day
• ACRA : Australian Conference on Robotics and Automation

2004 again promises to be an exciting year, with RoboCup2004 being held in Lisbon Portugal. In addition, the GuRoo will be present at countless ITEE activities throughout the year.

The Name

So where does the name come from? It's a tradition of all University of Queensland robotic soccer team to suffix -roo on to their name. Over the years there have been the RoboRoos, ViperRoos and the CrocaRoos. 'GuRoo' stands for "Grossly Underfunded Roo", a gentle poke at the slim budget the project runs on.

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