China's inaugural AI robot football match
Beijing just saw history made with China's first-ever 3v3 football match played entirely by AI-powered humanoid robots—no humans controlling them at all.
University teams coded their bots to play, dodge, and score on their own, as a warm-up for the 2025 World Humanoid Robot Games.
Tsinghua University's THU Robotics team took the win over China Agricultural University's Mountain Sea team, finishing 5-3.
Robots need to work on their balance
The match showed off some impressive robot footwork and teamwork, but also revealed they're not quite ready for the big leagues—many bots still needed help standing up after a fall.
Cheng Hao from Booster Robotics pointed out that keeping things safe will be crucial as robots start playing alongside people.
Still, this event marks a big step toward seeing robots and humans sharing the field in real games someday.