Japanese robots have done what their human counterparts can still only dream of, by winning the ‘Robocup’, a robotics equivalent of the football world cup. The Japanese automatons won the adult-size category while the ‘adolescent’ category was won by Germany.
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The tournament took place in the Dutch tech haven of Eindhoven, with a thousand soccer-playing robots aiming to become the next Lionel Messi.
Robot teams from over 40 countries participated in the event. The organizers said their goal is to field a team of robot footballers that could compete with a human squad by 2050.
To help achieve that objective, organisers have created multiple competition classes, including small robots, large robots, humanoid robots and even virtual robots, with plans to merge their techniques into a single squad of all-star androids capable of one day winning a man vs. machine matchup.
Humanoid robots have difficulty keeping their balance and the largest, human-height models move more like, well, robots than world-class athletes.