The first RoboCup
In Nagoya more than forty teams played robot and simulated football for the first time, and set the field a goal fifty years out.
Why it matters
Instead of a single task the field acquired a long-running competition where winning is immediately visible and progress is measured annually.
The organisers declared the goal: by 2050 a team of autonomous humanoids should beat the reigning human world champions. The task was chosen deliberately: it demands perception, coordination, teamwork and real-time operation at once. Chess demanded none of that, because there the environment is fully observable and one player moves at a time.