On the 5th at 1 p.m., at Songdo Convensia in Incheon, the scene of the soccer final in the large Humanoid Robot institutional sector of "Robocup 2026." On a mini soccer field measuring 176㎡, about 2.5% the size of a standard field (7,140㎡), six 118-centimeter Humanoid Robots were playing three-on-three soccer. They were robots fielded by Tsinghua University's "Hephaestus" and China Agricultural University's "CAU Mountain&Sea."
There were many "injuries" in each 10-minute half. The robots frequently fell or bumped into each other during the match, and some lay sprawled and couldn't get up. Even a minute before the end of the second half, as a Tsinghua team robot in a purple uniform ran toward the Agricultural University team's goal, one of the Agricultural University team's robots was lying on the ground near the goal. In the end, the Tsinghua team robot scored the final goal and won 6-2. Tsinghua's Hephaestus team captured back-to-back titles this year in the large Humanoid Robot institutional sector, which had 22 teams.
Zhao Mingguo, head coach of Tsinghua's Hephaestus team, said, "After last year's win, we focused more on kicking and passing," and noted, "The key to victory was that our moves to kick the ball faster and pivot sideways to pass were more flexible than other robots." Hu Biao, head coach of China Agricultural University's CAU Mountain&Sea team, said, "We tried over the past year to catch up with the Tsinghua team robots' running speed, but it wasn't enough."
From the 2nd to the 5th, "Robocup 2026" ran for four days with 218 teams from 45 countries competing across seven leagues in four fields (Humanoid Robot soccer, disaster response, home environment, industrial environment). Robocup was launched in 1997 by the World Robocup Federation (RCF), an international nonprofit academic organization in Robotics and artificial intelligence (AI). This year marks the 29th edition. The goal is to produce a robot soccer team by 2050 that can beat the human World Cup champion.
Both Tsinghua's Hephaestus team and China Agricultural University's CAU Mountain&Sea team, which reached this year's large Humanoid Robot institutional sector final, competed with the Humanoid T1 model developed by the Chinese company "Booster Robotics." According to Booster Robotics, the T1 is a 118-centimeter-tall, 30-kilogram Humanoid Robot, and its design—degrees of freedom (number of joints), knee joint torque, and range of motion—is optimized for soccer movements.
Booster Robotics is a company spun off from a Tsinghua University laboratory. At this year's Humanoid Robot soccer competition, which had a total of 56 teams (large, medium, and small), only eight teams showcased robots they built themselves. As many as 22 teams, about 40%, competed with Booster Robotics' T1 or K1 models. "UT AustinVilla" from the University of Texas (Austin) also fielded the Chinese T1.
Among teams that had previously built their own robots for the competition, many this year bought products from Booster Robotics to participate. The French team "RHOBAN" entered last year with a self-developed robot but competed this year with Booster Robotics' T1 model. A RHOBAN representative said, "We purchased Booster Robotics' robot to train soccer-specialized movements, and its soccer performance is excellent."
Teams that competed with Booster Robotics' robots cited high cost-effectiveness as the reason for choosing the company's products. Among the event sponsors—Booster Robotics, Fourier Intelligence, Unitree, and HAI-TORK—Booster Robotics had the lowest prices. Booster Robotics' T1 model costs $20,400 (about 31 million won), which is 32% cheaper than Fourier Intelligence's GR-1 model ($30,000). The domestically produced Humanoid "Alice 5" model, 170 centimeters tall and developed by Korean robot company AeiROBOT, is about 90 million won.
A representative of the "Bahia RT" team from Bahia State University in Brazil said, "Booster Robotics' product not only performs well in soccer but is also the cheapest, so our university team bought two within our budget."
As Chinese robots dominated the competition, some said Robocup's value as a barometer to compare countries' Humanoid Robot development levels had faded. Concerns were also raised that more countries' industrial worksites could be flooded with Chinese robots.
Hwang Myeong-jun, a professor in the Department of Mechanical Information Engineering at the University of Seoul, said, "As the rules changed to allow bringing non–self-developed robots, many of the award-winning and overseas teams in this year's competition used products from a single Chinese company," and added, "If Chinese robots are used in Korea as well, there will be no domestic robots, so support is needed for Korean teams developing robots."
Han Jae-kwon, a professor in the Department of Robotics at Hanyang University, said, "Robocup is a kind of trailer for the robot industry," and noted, "If the phenomenon of Chinese robots sweeping the field happens in industrial sites in four to five years, Chinese robots could dominate global industry." Han first competed in Robocup in 2011 with Virginia Tech in the United States and won, then formed a domestic team at Hanyang University and has competed every year since 2022.