Humanoid robots compete in 3-on-3 soccer game

Soccer is getting a high-tech upgrade in Beijing this weekend, and the players aren’t just fast — they’re fully robotic.

The RoBoLeague World Robot Soccer League will host its final match in the city’s Yizhuang Development Zone on Saturday, where teams of humanoid robots will go head-to-head in a 3-on-3 soccer game in which the players are completely controlled by artificial intelligence.

This competition, which is believed to be the first-ever 3-on-3 match between robots, is a preview for next year’s World Humanoid Robot Games, and four Chinese teams made up of robot players have earned their spots in the finals after a series of qualifiers.

The robots, which won’t have any human assistance, will play two 10-minute halves, with a 5-minute break.

During a Thursday training session, teams from Tsinghua University and Beijing Information Science and Technology University showed off their robot players. The machines may walk a little awkwardly, but they can run, kick, and chase the ball — all on their own.

“The World Robot Soccer League will be the first test competition for the 2025 World Humanoid Robot Games and China’s first-ever 3-versus-3 AI humanoid robot football match as well, which will put the participating robots’ endurance and agility to the test,” Dou Jing, one of the event organizers, told China Central Television (CCTV).

How do the robots know where to go? Each one is equipped with cameras and sensors that allow it to “see” the field and figure out where the ball is.

“At present, all the visual recognition and positioning abilities of the robot are accomplished through optical cameras,” explained Wang Yonghao, who is in charge of the competition’s operations.

“For instance, during the football match, it needs to first identify a white, round ball, or an object of a similar size. Then we make sure that the color white or any other similar color will not appear on the robots’ feet, on the body of the on-site staff and referees, including their shoes or other objects on them,” he told CCTV.

The robots have been trained with deep reinforcement learning — a type of artificial intelligence that helps them learn through trial and error.

“The robot should be able to see the football nearly 20 meters away at an accuracy rate of over 90 percent,” said Cheng Hao, founder and CEO of Booster Robotics.

“First, it should be able to tell what or where the ball, the goal, or the pitch is, and afterward it needs to make decisions about the role it is going to play based on all these inputs.”

The machine would then need to either advance the ball to a teammate or kick it toward the net to score a goal.

“All these are the technological challenges we aim to address at the moment. Of course, as the technology evolves, all these capabilities can be achieved for the robot now,” Cheng said.

Saturday’s game is just the beginning. Beijing will host the full World Humanoid Robot Games from August 15 to 17 as part of the World Robot Conference — the first global sporting event where every competitor is built, not born.