On the 5th at 1 p.m., at Songdo Convensia in Incheon, the scene of the large Humanoid Robot institutional sector soccer final at "Robocup 2026." On a mini pitch measuring 176㎡—about 2.5% of a standard soccer field's 7,140㎡—six 118-centimeter-tall 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."
In both halves, 10 minutes each, "injuries" were frequent. The robots often fell or collided during play and sometimes sprawled and couldn't get up. Even a minute before the end of the second half, as a Tsinghua robot in a purple uniform sprinted toward the Agricultural University goal, one Agricultural University robot lay on the ground near the goal. Tsinghua's 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 featured 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 movements to kick the ball faster and turn sideways for flexible passes were more agile than other robots, which was the key to victory." Hu Biao, head coach of China Agricultural University's CAU Mountain&Sea team, said, "Over the past year, we tried to catch up with the Tsinghua robots' running speed but fell short."
From the 2nd to the 5th, "Robocup 2026" ran for four days, drawing 218 teams from 45 countries across seven leagues in four areas (Humanoid Robot soccer, disaster rescue, home environment, industrial environment). Robocup, launched in 1997 by the international nonprofit academic organization RoboCup Federation (RCF) in the fields of Robotics and artificial intelligence (AI), marked its 29th edition this year. Its goal is to create a robot soccer team capable of beating the human World Cup champion by 2050.
Both finalists in this year's large Humanoid Robot institutional sector—Tsinghua's Hephaestus team and China Agricultural University's CAU Mountain&Sea team—competed with the Humanoid T1 model developed by the Chinese corporations Booster Robotics. According to Booster Robotics, the T1 is a 118-centimeter-tall, 30-kilogram Humanoid Robot, with degrees of freedom (number of joints), knee joint torque, and range of motion optimized for soccer movements.
Booster Robotics is a corporations spun off from a Tsinghua University lab. Of the total 56 teams (large, medium, small institutional sector) in this year's Humanoid Robot soccer competition, only eight fielded robots they built themselves. As many as 22 teams, about 40%, competed with Booster Robotics' T1 or K1 models. The University of Texas (Austin) "UT AustinVilla" also fielded the Chinese T1.
Several teams that previously built their own robots for the competition bought Booster Robotics products this year. The French team "RHOBAN" competed with a self-developed robot last year but entered with Booster Robotics' T1 model this year. A RHOBAN official 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 strong cost-effectiveness as the reason for choosing the company's products. Among the event sponsors—Booster Robotics, Fourier Intelligence, Unitree, and Hitecoque—Booster Robotics had the lowest prices. Booster Robotics' T1 model costs $20,400 (about 31 million won), 32% cheaper than Fourier Intelligence's GR-1 model ($30,000). The domestically made Humanoid "Alice 5" model, 170 centimeters tall and developed by Korean robot corporations AeiROBOT, is about 90 million won.
A representative of Brazil's Federal University of Bahia team "Bahia RT" said, "Booster Robotics products not only perform well in soccer but are the cheapest, so our university team bought two within our budget."
With Chinese robots dominating the competition, some said Robocup's value as a viewing point to compare countries' Humanoid Robot development levels has faded. Concerns were also raised that more national industrial worksites could be saturated with Chinese robots.
Hwang Myeong-jung, a professor in the Department of Mechanical and Information Engineering at the University of Seoul, said, "With the rule change allowing non–self-developed robots, many award-winning and overseas teams in this competition used products from a single Chinese company," and added, "If Chinese robots are used in Korea as well, domestic robots will disappear, 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 added, "If the phenomenon of Chinese robots sweeping the field occurs in industrial worksites in four to five years, Chinese robots could dominate global industry." Han first entered 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.