RoboCup is an international robotic competitions. There are various specialties: wheeled soccer, canine soccer (this is the robot’s perspective), humanoid soccer, rescue robots.

During the even-numbered years, RoboCup is often held in the same country hosting the World Soccer Championship (year = 2 (mod 4)) or the Olympic games (year = 0 (mod 4)). This year it was organized in China.

But a couple of weeks ago, Minoru Asada, the president of RoboCup Federation, announced on the website that “some change might have to occur with respect to RoboCup” (notice the typical Japanese understatement).

Days later it was announced that

Due to the Olympic related issues, the Government in Suzhou, China will not be able to hold RoboCup 2008 IN JULY. Please stop making any reservation of the flights or accommodations to China. Please do not buy any tickets for China. Now, the RoboCup Federation is working for any alternative and let you know the final decision soon. Thanks.

The back story is that, in the aftermath of the Tibetan revolts, the Chinese government had been cancelling “for security reasons” every international event except the games.

Panic and distress spread through the teams, which would have seen a year of preparation wasted.

But yesterday it was announced that “Chinese Organization Chair and RoboCup Trustees managed to stabilize the situation and have RoboCup at the same place and time as planned.”.

I guess that all’s well that ends well, but I would like to know more about what happened behind the scenes.