At the 2020 RoboCup China Competition, two teams from Zhejiang University—ZJUNlict and ZJUDancer—clinched first place in the Small Size League and the Humanoid KidSize League respectively.

The Small Size League is one of the oldest RoboCup Soccer leagues. It focuses on the problem of intelligent multi-robot/agent cooperation and control in a highly dynamic environment with a hybrid centralized/distributed system. Due to their small size, robots can move as fast as 4m/s and the ball speed can amount to 6.5m/s.

ZJUNlict was established in 2003. With the immense efforts of each ZJUNlicter, the team won the world championship in the Small Size League in RoboCup in 2013, 2014, 2018 and 2019.

At the 2020 RoboCup China Competition, ZJUNlict mesmerized the audience with dazzling performance. The team made it to the final with three clean victories. In the final, the team defeated the SRC team from Shanghai Jiao Tong University—the reigning championship team—with a clean 3:0 victory.

The other team—ZJUDancer—has developed into a highly competitive team in the Humanoid KidSize League. In the Humanoid KidSize League, autonomous robots with a human-like body plan and human-like senses play soccer against each other. Dynamic walking, running, and kicking the ball while maintaining balance, visual perception of the ball, other players, and the field, self-localization, and team play are among the many research issues investigated in the Humanoid League.

At the 2020 RoboCup China Competition, ZJUDancer beat the rival teams from Southeast University and Tsinghua University in the preliminary round and defeated the team from Beijing Information Science & Technology University in the semifinal. In the final, it clinched an overwhelming 7:0 victory against the team from Northwestern Polytechnic University.

The official goal of RoboCup is that “By the middle of the 21st century, a team of fully autonomous humanoid robot soccer players shall win a soccer game, complying with the official rules of FIFA, against the winner of the most recent World Cup.” With the progress of artificial intelligence and robotics, the soccer game between robot players and human players will definitely rivet immense attention from the whole world in the not-too-distant future.