As one of the founding leagues of the international RoboCup initiative, the RoboCup Middle Size League (MSL) robot soccer competition has been organised from 1997 onwards.[2] On an indoor soccer field, with goals of reduced size, teams of five fully autonomous soccer playing robots compete against one another. No human intervention is allowed during a match, except to take robots on or from the field. Although limitations with respect to maximum size and weight are in place, teams are completely free to design both hardware and software.