The dream of China's football team winning the World Cup was first realized by a group of robots.

One month after the Chinese men's national football team missed out on the 2026 FIFA World Cup jointly hosted by the United States, Canada, and Mexico, the Chinese humanoid robot football team won the World Cup championship.

On the evening of July 20th, Beijing time, in the final of the RoboCup Humanoid Robot Soccer World Cup (Adult Group) held in Salvador, Brazil, the Huoshen Team from Tsinghua University defeated the Shanhai Team from China Agricultural University 5-3 to claim the championship.

This is also the first time in the 28-year history of the RoboCup that a Chinese team has won the championship in the most competitive "Humanoid League." Previously, Chinese university teams had won championships in the "Middle-Size League," but in terms of technical difficulty and attention, the "Humanoid League" is undoubtedly the most prestigious.

It took the Huoshen Team 21 years from their first participation in the World Cup in 2005 to reaching the pinnacle.

Over these 21 years, the students participating in the competitions have changed generation after generation, but the leading teacher has always been Zhao Mingguo, a researcher at the Department of Automation of Tsinghua University, the director of the Robot Control Laboratory and the Brain-Inspired Robot Center of the Unmanned Systems Center. He is also the founder of the Huoshen Team.

On the road to the championship, Zhao Mingguo had the idea of giving up the humanoid robot football project several times for different reasons, but he finally persevered.

Zhao Mingguo, who was in Brazil, told Lanxiong Sports that compared with the championship, he cares more about the technological innovations they made in humanoid robot football this year, such as realizing unprotected competitions, autonomous getting up after falling, rapid recognition ability, and movement ability. "All these have changed the development direction of the RoboCup."

Start

24 years ago, Zhao Mingguo chose to develop his career in Beijing because of the robot project.

At that time, he was pursuing a doctorate in Mechatronic Engineering at the Robotics Research Institute of Harbin Institute of Technology. In 2000, he made an academic visit to Tsinghua University. Learning that the university was working on a humanoid robot project, he was very interested - Tsinghua University was the first university in China to develop a humanoid robot project. One year later, at the invitation of Professor Chen Ken from the Department of Mechanical Engineering of Tsinghua University, Zhao Mingguo came to Tsinghua to conduct postdoctoral research on the robot project.

At that time, Tsinghua University was already participating in the Robot World Cup, but in the simulation group. The competition was held in a virtual simulation environment on the computer, and no real robots were needed. Participants in the competition needed strong coding skills and were generally computer science students.

In 2003, after completing his postdoctoral research, Zhao Mingguo stayed at the Department of Automation of Tsinghua University as a teacher. The following year, he founded the Huoshen Team and led the students to participate in domestic and international robot soccer competitions. Different from the simulation competitions, all the competitions they participated in were for physical robots.

The Robot World Cup at that time uniformly required the use of Aibo robotic dogs developed by Sony Corporation. As a sponsor, Sony provided the robotic dogs to the participating teams for free. However, since 2004, the year when the Huoshen Team participated in the competition, Sony stopped providing the robotic dogs for free, and each participating team had to buy them at their own expense. One robotic dog cost about 20,000 yuan, and 4 were used in each game.

To prepare for the competition, the Huoshen Team bought 8 robotic dogs, costing 160,000 yuan. Zhao Mingguo told Lanxiong Sports that all this money came from the department's teaching funds. He and the students programmed the robotic dogs to make them "dogs that can play football."

With 8 football-playing robotic dogs, the Huoshen Team could dominate in domestic competitions, often scoring a score of 10-0 and winning the championship of the domestic robot soccer competition (Quadruped Group). The batch of robotic dogs that won the championship that year is still preserved in the Robot Control Laboratory of Tsinghua University. They are witnesses to the start of the Huoshen Team.

▲ The robotic dogs participating in the competition in 2006.

Although the Huoshen Team was dominant in the domestic arena, their performance was not satisfactory in the international arena. There were more than 20 teams participating in the Robot World Cup that year, and they couldn't even make it into the top eight.

When leading the team to participate in competitions abroad, Zhao Mingguo noticed that there was already a humanoid robot soccer competition. He believed that humanoid robots were the future development direction of robots. Therefore, after returning to China, he led the students to assemble humanoid robots.

At that time, making a humanoid robot required 20 servos, which were not available in China and had to be imported from Japan. One servo cost about 3,000 to 5,000 yuan. To ensure normal participation in the competition, the Huoshen Team needed to make at least two robots, which required 40 servos. Just the cost of buying the servos was almost 200,000 yuan, which exceeded the budget.

After learning about the situation, a friend of Zhao Mingguo directly sent him 40 servos from Japan. Zhao Mingguo still remembers his friend's generosity 20 years ago. He sometimes sighs, "Developing robots is a very costly thing."

Using the self-assembled robots, the Huoshen Team was invincible in domestic competitions. However, they still couldn't make it into the top eight in the international arena. Over three years, the Huoshen Team spent nearly 500,000 yuan on purchasing, researching, and manufacturing robots. In addition to the teaching funds, this money also came from donations from friends and alumni.

"The money supported by the department was almost used up. I thought at that time that if there was no improvement in performance, I would stop doing it." In 2007, Zhao Mingguo had the idea of giving up humanoid robot football for the first time.

Perseverance

The first turning point for the Huoshen Team occurred in 2008. That year, the Robot World Cup was held in Suzhou, China. The Huoshen Team, which had never made it into the top eight before, advanced to the final and was just one step away from the championship.

The reason why the Huoshen Team transformed from a "rookie" that couldn't make it into the world's top eight to a strong team that advanced to the final was their development of the "Virtual Slope Method" for humanoid robot walking. This theory is an extension of the "Passive Walking" theory proposed by Canadian scholar McGill in 2005.

The main idea of the "Virtual Slope Method" is to equate the powered walking of a robot on a flat surface to the passive walking on a slope. In this way, the walking speed of the robot becomes faster, reaching a relative speed of 4.26 leg lengths per second, which is similar to the speed of a human walking quickly.

The technological innovation enabled the Huoshen Team to achieve a breakthrough in performance. Zhao Mingguo said that if they hadn't achieved the second place in Suzhou in 2008, the team might have disbanded after that competition.

The "Virtual Slope Method" theory enabled the Huoshen Team to maintain a stable performance in the top three in the Robot World Cup, but they never won the championship. In 2013, the idea of "giving up" emerged in Zhao Mingguo's mind again. "I felt that the passive walking had reached its limit, and we couldn't win the championship in the competition. There was nothing new to do."

▲ A group photo after the World Cup competition in 2025 (Zhao Mingguo is on the far left).

In February 2014, Zhao Mingguo was invited to visit the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the United States for half a year. He thought it was a good opportunity to "refresh his mind." During this period, he also participated in the design and development of an unmanned bicycle, but it couldn't be put into production due to some reasons.

After returning to China from the visit to MIT, Zhao Mingguo cooperated with UBTECH Robotics to establish a research institute in Beijing. He led more than 20 doctoral students to continue in-depth research on humanoid robots. The two sides jointly developed the first-generation Walker robot.

From 2017 to 2021, the Walker robot went through 4 iterations. All the robots used by the Huoshen Team in the competitions during those years were from the Walker series. From 2017 to 2019, they won the second place twice and the third place once.

Zhao Mingguo's cooperation with UBTECH Robotics ended in September 2021. Public information stated that "Zhao Mingguo left due to health reasons," but more people believe that in fact, there were differences in the future development concepts between him and Zhou Jian, the founder of UBTECH Robotics.

After returning to the school from the research institute, Zhao Mingguo continued to lead the students to research and develop humanoid robots and participate in robot soccer competitions. In June 2023, Cheng Hao, a student of Zhao Mingguo and the third captain of the Huoshen Team, established the Accelerated Evolution Technology Company in Beijing. Cheng Hao told Lanxiong Sports that the name "Accelerated Evolution" was chosen because he believes that "humanoid robots will accelerate human evolution." The company invited Zhao Mingguo to serve as the chief scientist, aiming to develop humanoid robot products and hoping to drive the development of robot technology through playing football.

Since then, the Huoshen Team has started to cooperate with Accelerated Evolution. They participated in various competitions with the Booster T1 robot developed by Accelerated Evolution, but they still missed the championship of the Robot World Cup in 2024.

One year later, they finally stood on the championship podium.

History

It took the Huoshen Team 21 years from their first participation in the world competition to winning the championship. During this period, the algorithms and robots were updated almost every year.

Xu Chiheng, the former co-founder of SenseTime and the CEO of Kuqiji, once participated in four Robot World Cups with the Huoshen Team. He showed Lanxiong Sports a video of their competition in Mexico City in 2012 in his office.

Although it was also called the Robot World Cup, in fact, each side only had one robot. During the competition, there was such a scene: the attacking robot stood at the arc of the center circle of the field, facing the opponent's goal, and the ball was about two meters behind its right side. To kick the ball, it first had to observe through the camera on its head to determine the position of the ball, then turn around and walk to the ball, and dribble it towards the opponent's goal.

When completing this set of actions, the 1.2-meter-tall robot first turned its head slightly to the right and rear of its body. After finding the position of the ball, it stepped in place while rotating its body counterclockwise around the origin of the center circle. After rotating its body 180 degrees, it started to move towards the ball. The robot took small steps and walked as if it was pacing, so the video author had to play the video in fast forward.

The robot walked behind the ball and swayed its body - it needed to maintain balance in this way. After standing firmly, it stretched out its right foot and kicked the ball. The ball rolled about one meter on the artificial turf and then stopped.

It took the robot 21 seconds to walk counterclockwise from the front of the football to the back, stand firmly, and complete the kicking action, just like playing in slow motion.

At that time, the robot could only "shoot" when it dribbled the ball close to the opponent's goal. Its shooting method was the same as dribbling, which was to kick the ball forward. The ball slowly rolled across the goal line, and the defensive player standing in the goal not only didn't intercept it but even couldn't turn his head to watch the football slowly roll by.

Xu Chiheng said that the reason for such a competition at that time was completely due to the rules. "The robots at that time could also kick the ball into the goal with one kick, but that would make the competition less spectacular."

However, Xu Chiheng also said that strictly speaking, the competition they participated in at that time couldn't really be called a football game. "It was more like a challenge to let the robot move the ball into the opponent's goal."

▲ Modern robots in training. (Photo taken by Zhao Yu)

For the humanoid robots at that time, it was not easy to complete the task of "moving the ball into the opponent's goal." You know, even when performing a set of offensive and shooting actions without confrontation, they often fell down. To ensure the safety of the robots, whether it was a one-on-one, two-on-two, or three-on-three competition, a "protector" was arranged behind each robot. During the competition, the protector would slightly spread his arms and follow behind the robot. Once he noticed that the robot was about to fall, he would immediately hold it up.

"Our competition strategy at that time was 'Rather slow down but don't fall.'" Xu Chiheng said. This was also the reason why the robots always took small steps forward in the football game. "Taking big steps would make them more likely to fall." The robots at that time were not very resistant to falls. Once a component malfunction occurred, they could only be replaced or withdraw from the competition.

In the 2012 World Cup, the robot of the Huoshen Team had a problem with the step bearing in the semi-final, but it wasn't noticed, which led to their loss in the final. In the previous group stage, the Huoshen Team had defeated the final opponent 4-1. Xu Chiheng said that with limited funds, even if the robot's malfunction was discovered after the semi-final, there was no spare robot. "That was the closest the Huoshen Team had ever come to the championship in their 10 years of participation."

Evolution

The protectors in the Robot World Cup were only removed this year, and each team had to improve the anti-fall ability of their robots.

The Huoshen Team used the Booster T1 robot developed and produced by Accelerated Evolution Technology Company in this World Cup. It is 1.2 meters tall, weighs 30 kilograms, and one battery can ensure it to walk for two hours or stand for four hours.

To make the robot have the ability to resist impact and falls, Accelerated Evolution Technology Company conducts stress tests on it. One method is to hang a 10-kilogram ball with a rope and let it hit the robot obliquely from a height of one meter, two meters, or three meters in the air to observe its stability under external force. The test results show that the T1 robot can withstand an impact of 15 Newtons per second without falling (equivalent to the force of three 500-milliliter bottles of mineral water per second). Cheng Hao told Lanxiong Sports that the T1 robot must be able to work normally after falling 100 times before it can be launched on the market.

The skin of the T1 robot is made of high-strength metal and engineering plastic. Cheng Hao said that when the robot falls, it sometimes makes a pit on the cement floor, but it has no problem at all.