Robots are already capable of playing soccer. Those of you who have watched their competition have noticed that they do struggle with goalkeeping and other basic moves. Researchers have now trained a Unitree G1 robot to save shots like a real goalkeeper. It can also jump and do squat motions to evade balls. Humanoid Goalkeeper uses a single-stage, end-to-end reinforcement learning policy to adapt. As the below video shows, it can leap with agility to save shots coming its away.
These robots are getting pretty good at saving penalties though, as long as they are within their reach. Their RL policy enables them to interact with dynamic objects. You can find out more here.
[Credit: Junli Ren, Junfeng Long, Tao Huang, Huayi Wang, Zirui Wang, Feiyu Jia, Wentao Zhang, Wang, Ping Luo, Jiangmiao Pang]
