China's first 3-on-3 robot soccer match kicks off (and ends with two bots being stretched off the pitch...)
But the quality of play on show suggests that a robot won't be claiming the Ballon d'Or any time soon.
As the AI-controlled bots shuffled slowly across the turf, they bumped into each other, toppled over, and only occasionally kicking the ball.
By the time the final whistle blew, two bots had to be stretchered off the pitch after taking falls that would earn most human players a yellow card for diving.
Cheng Hao, founder of Booster Robotics, which supplied the robots for the tournament, told the Global Times that the robots currently have the skills of five-to six-year-old children.
However, Mr Hao believes that the robots' abilities will grow 'exponentially' and will soon be 'surpassing youth-level teams and eventually challenging adult teams'.
In the future, Mr Hao even says that humans could play against robots in specially arranged matches.
However, with the robots currently struggling to avoid collisions, more will need to be done to make the bots safe for humans to play with.
The match took place as part of the ROBO league football tournament in Beijing, a test game ahead of China's upcoming 2025 World Humanoid Games.
Four teams of engineers were each provided with robots and tasked with building the AI strategies which control everything from passing and shooting to getting up after a fall.
Ultimately, THU Robotics from Tsinghua University defeated the Mountain Sea from China Agricultural University team five goals to three to win the championship.
However, despite impressive advancements in robotics, the matches showed that robotics still has a long way to go.
The robots struggle with what engineers call 'dynamic obstacle avoidance', which means they tend to run into other moving players despite moving only one meter per second.
This was such an issue that the tournament's organizers had to use a specially made version of football's rules which allows more 'non-malicious collisions'.
Likewise, although the robots were sometimes able to stand back up, human assistants sometimes had to step in and set them back on their feet.
At one point in the match, the referee even had to hold back two robots as they blindly trampled a fallen teammate.
These kinds of difficult scenarios are exactly why robotics researchers are so interested in using sports as testbeds for their technology.
Sports involve multiple moving objects, rapidly changing situations and demand levels of teamwork and coordination that have long surpassed the capabilities of robots.
Mr Cheng told the Global Times: 'We chose the football scenario for robot competition primarily for two reasons: first, to encourage students to apply their algorithmic skills to real-world robotics; second, to showcase the robots' ability to walk autonomously and stably, withstand collisions, and demonstrate higher levels of intelligence and safety.'
Similarly, Google's DeepMind has used football to help test its learning algorithms, demonstrating miniature football-playing robots in 2023.
China is currently pushing forward with its efforts to produce AI-powered humanoid robots, and is often using sports to show off their potential.
This follows a recent kickboxing match between robots developed by Unitree Robotics as part of the China Media Group World Robot Competition.
Similarly, 21 robots developed by Chinese manufacturers competed in the Yizhuang half marathon alongside thousands of humans.
The winner, Tiangong Ultra, finished the race in two hours, 40 minutes and 42 seconds, but some robots struggled to complete the race.
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