Game turns out to be not quite as seamless as human football – with the ability to remain upright proving the participants’ main challenge

This article is more than 3 years old

This article is more than 3 years old

An American team of robots have defeated their Australian rivals in a game of football to win the RoboCup Challenge after technical problems plagued the Australian side.



The University of Texas at Austin’s Austin Villa beat the University of New South Wales’ Runswift 7-3 during China’s World Robot Conference.

RoboCup Singapore: the fooball tournament for robots Read more

Jeremy Collette, from the University of New South Wales in Australia, bemoaned the glitches that hampered Runswift.

“We’ve been using that robot for three or four days straight, and just before the finals it stops,” said Collette. “Then we had another problem with another robot, which is kind of like a perfect storm for us.”

Robot soccer matches have been played since the mid-1990s and this competition used Nao robots – human-shaped automatons about 58 cm tall developed by French company Aldebaran Robotics.

Programmed by advanced programming students at the universities, the robots exchanged information wirelessly and “bet” on which of their teammates would reach the ball first.

However the game was not quite as seamless as a football match involving humans. The main problem was the robots’ ability to remain upright.

“The robots are telling each other where they believe the ball is, where they believe that they are on the field, if they’ve fallen down or not, and then they’re also to decide who goes for the ball,” explained University of Texas at Austin student Josiah Hanna.

Monday’s match drew a large crowd of spectators.

“I think these robots are able to move quite flexibly and this is a pleasant surprise,” said Sun Qiong, who brought her son to watch the match.