Can the national football team in the robot win the World Cup? This is also the experimental field of China s science and technology innovation

Recently, China's first unmanned remote control robot football match came to an end in Beijing. Tsinghua University Vulcan team, which won the championship this time, also defeated the German team in the Global Robot World Cup to win the championship not long ago.

Robots play football not just for football. In fact, the unmanned remote control football robot game fully reflects the various skills a robot needs to complete the work independently. Behind the excellent performance of the Chinese robot football team is the fruits of the strong robot research atmosphere on university campuses. College students who grew up with the help of various robot competitions are giving China a step ahead in its embodied intelligence talent reserve.

After the robot marathon and robot boxing competition, on the evening of June 28, the 2025 RoBoLeague Robot Football League (hereinafter referred to as "Jiangshao") finals staged a peak battle in the Beijing Smart E-sports Event Center located in the Beijing Economic and Technological Development Zone (Beijing Yizhuang). After 3 hours of competition, the Vulcan team from Tsinghua University won the championship.

This "Job Super" is also the first test match of the 2025 World Humanoid Robot Games and the first domestic robot football 3v3 AI game.

As the first robot football event in China, this competition adopts a brand new competition system and rules. The participating teams use the accelerated evolution T1 robot provided by the organizer as the standard platform. There is no remote control in this competition, which requires the robot to rely entirely on AI strategies to act independently without the intervention of human protectors, fully demonstrating the robot's technical achievements in the fields of motion control, visual perception, positioning and navigation, decision-making planning, and multi-machine collaboration.

Although robot football players are still a little immature compared to human players, judging from the current development trend, it is not a fantasy that humanoid robots can win human players in the football field or even win the World Cup in the future. The technologies such as pathfinding, shooting, confrontation and getting up shown in robot football not only show China's leading position in the world of humanoid robots, but also have huge commercial value in this wave of embodied intelligence.

This "Ji Chao" is guided by the Beijing Economic and Technological Development Zone Management Committee and co-organized by Shangyicheng (Beijing) Science and Technology Culture Group Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Shangyicheng Group") and Beijing Accelerated Evolution Technology Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Accelerated Evolution").

As the first test match of the 2025 World Humanoid Robot Games, it is also the first domestic robot football 3v3 AI game. This highly confrontational event is not only a platform for displaying cutting-edge technology of humanoid robots, but also undertakes the key mission of providing practical data and rules verification for the football projects of the global comprehensive humanoid robot competition. The organizer told Observer.com that this year's "Job Super" achieved two landmark breakthroughs:

1. The event adopted the organizer to provide an accelerated evolution T1 robot with a market price of 199,000 yuan. All participating robots rely entirely on AI strategies to operate independently, without the intervention of human protectors, and can independently complete the fall and get up;

2. The optimized penalty mechanism is adopted to significantly reduce the interruption of the competition and improve the fluency and intensity of confrontation.

It is worth noting that compared with previous robot marathons and robot boxing competitions, staff members allowed hand-held remote controls to control robots. This robot football match banned remote controls and required robots to rely on AI to act independently.

provides accelerated evolution of robots for this competition. To Observer.com, the accelerated evolution T1 robot provided this time only provides ontology and underlying technology, and AI logic such as football rules or offense and defense are written by the participating teams themselves.

Observer.com noticed that in this competition, the robots were all black clothes and shoes, which made a significant color difference from white football, appropriately reducing the difficulty of development.

In the finals on June 28, four teams from the Blaze Light Team of Beijing University of Information Technology, Tsinghua University Future Laboratory Power Intelligent Team, Tsinghua University Vulcan Team, and China Agricultural University Shanhai Team presented a "new" football match feast that combines science and technology and competition to the audiences on and outside the field. In the end, Tsinghua University Vulcan Team defeated China Agricultural University Shanhai Team 5:3 to win the championship.

In the process of passing, receiving, clearing and guarding, six "players" showed the cutting-edge technical achievements of humanoid robots in the fields of motion control, visual perception, positioning and navigation, decision-making planning, and multi-machine collaboration.

The captain of the Power Intelligent Team of the Future Laboratory of Tsinghua University told Observer.com: "How to identify the movement of the ball, how to drive the ball forward in different positions on the court, and how to punish corner kicks all require targeted technical research and development."

Regarding the prospects of the future robot football game, the captain said, "The robot plays football and human plays football are still completely different at this stage." However, with the continuous breakthroughs of key technologies, "the idea of ​​(the robot defeats humans) will be reflected in reality in the future."

Of course, in actual performance, the participating robots are still far away from humans, and not only are they difficult to compete with real people in terms of movement speed and flexibility, but they may even make low-level mistakes such as falling without the ball. But for robots, being able to make independent decisions without human remote control is an important step.

Moreover, since the robot football match is only used by college students to participate in the spare time, the level shown in the competition does not represent the limit of robotic athletic ability at present. An industry insider pointed out to Observer.com that more and more college students are beginning to come into contact with such robot events on campus, which has greatly improved their ability to combine theory with practice, greatly deepened their understanding of technology, and can avoid many detours in the future entrepreneurship process. This is the greatest significance of the event..

Robot Football Game is not new in the international arena. Founded in 1997, RoboCup (RobotWorldCup Robot World Cup), is an international academic and educational activity aimed at promoting the research and development of artificial intelligence, intelligent robots and intelligent control technologies. At the beginning of the project, the ambitious goal of robot football team defeating the human team and winning the World Cup championship in 2050 was set.

In this international robot competition, teams from China have also achieved good results many times. In the latest RoboCup match in March this year, the Super League champion Tsinghua University Vulcan team used the accelerated evolution T1 robot to defeat the host German Sweaty team 9:0 to win the championship.

Robot football matches are not just for football. The ability of Chinese humanoid robot football players to complete football matches independently by AI means that the robot can independently perform more complex functions.

CEO of Beijing Acceleration Evolution Technology Co., Ltd., which provides robots for this "Jia Super" said: "(Accelerating Evolution T1) can now see a distance of nearly 20 meters to identify a football, and the accuracy rate can be more than 90%. First of all, it can identify the goal and the court, and then make decisions at the same time, and then kick the ball accurately into the goal. These are actually relatively large technical challenges at present. Of course, with the development of technology, there are already methods to implement these abilities."

In addition to breakthroughs in specific technologies, robot football is also a touchstone to test the comprehensive strength of robots.

Commercialization Director of Accelerated Evolution Feng Yi told Observer.com: "The football scene reflects the limits of the robot's motion control ability. On the one hand, it is the limits that its hardware can carry, and on the other hand, it is the limits of secondary development based on the ontology. Whether it is passing/shooting decisions, falling to the ground and getting up, blocking confrontation, it is a very test of the developer's level. At present, the accelerated evolution T1 robot can be competent for these functions and even have the potential to achieve more football movements."

Cheng Hao believes: "Competitive competitions are the best training ground, which can best promote the iteration of algorithms and hardware technology. Moreover, the development of robot football technology is not limited to In the competitive arena, its core technologies such as high-precision motion control, dynamic environment perception, and multi-machine collaborative decision-making are penetrating into a wider range of industrial and life scenarios. "

For the future development of the robot industry, Cheng Hao shared his own roadmap: From ToD (Developer developer) to ToB (Business commercial use) to ToC (Consumer home use), robot football is a phased sign of the industry from ToD to ToB. If robots can start from competitive events and do a good job in the entertainment of playing football, then they will be closer to the future C-end.

It is understood that the accelerated evolution T1 robot used in this competition has sold hundreds of units since it was officially released in October last year. Bian Yuansong, chairman of Shangyicheng Group, the operator of the competition, said that this RoBoLeague event carries far-reaching value beyond competition itself. It is a "test field" for cutting-edge technologies such as dynamic balance between bifoes and collaborative decision-making of multiple machines. It not only provides important technical verification for the football projects of the humanoid robot sports event, but also lays a solid foundation for the iterative upgrade of the sensitivity of embodied robots, and is also a "booster" for industrial upgrading.

Although the performance of robot players in this game is relatively immature than that of humans, we can see an important trend in the development of robots - the development of AI+ embodied intelligence will enable the robot track to achieve a leap forward.

Feng Yi told Observer.com: "Although robots still have two versions: remote control and AI control, in the future, actual robot applications must implement functions through AI logic and algorithms." Coincidentally, the star robot company Yushu Technology also launched its latest humanoid robot this year - G1-Comp. This robot can also be competent for the responsibilities of robot players, and is also controlled by AI rather than by remote control, representing the consensus of leading Chinese companies on the development of the industry.

Wang Xingxing of Yushu Technology once said this year: "The biggest problem at present is that the entire robot AI has not broken through a critical point. In the field of embodied intelligence or robot AI, people still think robots are a bit clumsy and can only do some fixed work, but I am personally optimistic. In another three or four years, it will not exceed five years, such as in the industry or service industry, terminal products can appear."