Entraînés en simulation, des robots humanoïdes footballeurs ont marqué 76 buts et n'en ont encaissé que 11

In 2025, the Tsinghua Hephaestus team used the researchers' control system in two international competitions: the RoboCup, in the adult-size humanoid league, then the World Humanoid Robot Games. It won both. In total, its robots scored 76 goals and conceded only 11.

In tests on a real robot, the ball ended up in the net in roughly 80 to 90% of shots taken from the attacking half of the pitch.

Rather than correcting the robot piece by piece through trial and error, the team trained its control system in a computer simulation. The results are published in the journal Science Robotics.

The simulation deliberately inflicted vision errors, delays and moments when the ball was not detected. The robot thus learned to guess where the ball probably was, so it could keep playing when it lost sight of it.

The researchers acknowledge one limitation: for now, the robot only takes account of the ball and the goal, and ignores the other players on the pitch.