Forget Atlas delivering the match ball at the Fifa Round of 16 Brazil vs Norway game! Robotics has its own world cup. Robocup is an international competition that promotes and advances robotics and AI through the challenges presented by its various leagues.
On July 5, 2026, for the very first time, two 11-humanoid-robot teams faced each other to play soccer. This historic event took place as part of the 2026 RoboCup World Championship of Robotics held in Incheon, South Korea.
The original goal of the annual RoboCup contest was that by 2050 a team of soccer robots should be able to beat the human world champions. Watch the highlights from this milestone-game, albeit an unofficial one, in which B-Human (Bremen, Germany) played HTWK Robots (Leipzig, Germany) with 11 Booster robots on either side.
This weekend also saw the finale of the league competitions at RoboCup 2026. Congratulations to the following top three teams in each size class:
Invic, Wuhan University, China
Hamburg Bit-Bots, Universität Hamburg, Germany
GeoHBots, School of Artificial Intelligence, China University of Geosciences, China
B-Human, Universität Bremen and German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI), Germany
HTWK Robots, Leipzig University of Applied Sciences, Germany
Rhoban, University of Bordeaux, France
Tsinghua Hephaestus, Tsinghua University, China
CAU Mountain&Sea, China Agricultural University, China
Water, Beijing Information Science & Technology University, China
In addition to the main competitions, there were five league-wide awards:
Best Customized Humanoid Award: HERoEHS (ALICE 4th version)
Best Humanoid Software Award: B-Human (Game Controller)
Open Research Challenge: Ruhrbot Devils (AI Camera Platform for Embedded 2D/3D Game Analysis in RoboCup HSL)
Best Innovation Award: Bahia Robotics Team
Best Referee Award: Anastasia Prisacaru (Berlin United)
China’s Booster Robotics may have won the overall cup with more than 60% of all teams, including the league winners, using one of the Booster humanoid models.
This widespread adoption signals a fundamental shift in what robotics competitions measure, from "who can build the robot" to "who can make the robot smarter." In past years, teams spent much of their R&D resources building the robot itself from scratch, with significant effort going into mechanical design, hardware development, and basic locomotion control. This year marked a clear inflection point: leading teams focused almost entirely on pushing the boundaries of perception, real-time decision-making, and multi-agent coordination, while Booster Robotics served as the underlying platform, continuing to advance the robots' core leg and foot locomotion capabilities, improving reliability in high-speed running, sudden stops and turns, fall recovery, and sustained motion. This separation of hardware and software lets complex code perform reliably in the real world. Read more at Booster Robotics
I have decided to (unofficially) award Booster T1 the Golden Boot of the 2026 Robocup Championships for dominating the winning teams, and also for the viral video of T1 taking penalty shots… and knocking holes in the wall behind the goal. Epic power.
Initially started in the mid 90s by researchers, Robocup was divided into three football/soccer leagues for small size, middle size and simulation. The competition was colocated with the IJCAI conference in 1997, 1998 and 1999. Lucy Smith of AIhub and Robohub sat down with one of Robocup’s founders, Professor Manuela Veloso to learn more. Full interview here
In Melbourne 2000, RoboCup introduced RoboCup Junior and the RoboCup Rescue League, which was a simulated disaster response task. Later the RoboCup@Home was introduced to cater for the increasing interest in service robotics.
Fun Fact: RoboCup Junior Rescue was my first robotics coaching role and my eight year old son’s team actually made it to the Australian finals. Sadly that is where we learned that some changing lighting conditions could completely derail our robots.
Great evening at Blue River Technologies on Wednesday - filled to capacity with more than 115 people in attendance. As well as a short introduction to Silicon Valley Robotics from our President Alexander Kernbaum, Board Member Jim Ostrowski and Director Andra Keay (self), we had several very interesting short talks.
Jim Ostrowski, Chief Technology Officer at Blue River Technologies (a John Deere company) gave an overview of the range of systems that Blue River is developing for agriculture and construction with their expertize in engineering machine learning algorithms and robotics hardware solutions to tackle big problems.
Blue River Technology is hiring!
Timothy Koide, Head of Partnerships at Reservoir Farms talked about the evolution of Reservoir to include residency programs on a working farm ecosystem with commercial crop production and now also venture funding. Reservoir gives agtech founders an unprecedented opportunity to test, learn and connect with customers.
Attend Reservoir’s Ruggedize Deep Tech conference
Tessa Lau, Founder/CEO of Dusty Robotics shared how she knew she had product market fit when their first trial site insisted on paying them because they’d just delivered great value. Another of Dusty’s customers, The Weitz Company, created a video about Dusty’s robots for their own marketing purposes.
Ping Li introduced ‘Externally Commutated Motor Technology’, a Patented Motor Architecture for the Next Generation of Humanoid Robotics and Intelligent Machines. His patented technology can improve humanoid joint performance particularly in joints that exert large force like knee joints kicking footballs.
The ECDM patent is applicable to any PMAC or BLDC motor, compatible with existing drive hardware, and requires no exotic materials or manufacturing processes. The path from patent to production is a straightforward engineering programme. The heavy industry world validated the underlying physics over a century of large DC operation. The ECDM delivers that physics in a package scaled for humanoid joints.
Ping Li is interested in commercial partners for his patented technology.
pingsj@gmail.com | Cell: (408) 718-3008
Our apologies to those who couldn’t wait for the security sign in process and those who were still on the event wait list. You are first to be invited to the next Bots, Bevs and Devs on August 5 at Foxglove in San Francisco.
This humanoid robotics company is going public, but its CEO isn’t promising a robot in your home anytime soon - TechCrunch
Boston Dynamics CEO: America’s next 250 years will be built by robots. Here’s what’s standing in the way - Fortune
This startup thinks robotics is about to have its ChatGPT moment - TechCrunch
Ex-Tesla Optimus scientist unveils European humanoid robot startup - elektrek
Meet Isaac 1, the $8,000 home robot that wants to take folding laundry off your to-do list - Business Insider
Isaac 1 Skips Legs to Hit $7,999: Weave Home Robot Bets on Upper-Body Engineering - TechTimes
Toilet cleaning robot seeks to meet Japanese high standards - The Asahi Shinbun
Neo’s Hands - An API to the physical world - 1X
Mistral launches first robotics model in physical AI push - Reuters
The first commercial human-like robot is here. Are replicants next? - Fast Company
Japan’s Shimizu bets on humanoid robots to tackle construction labor crunch - Nikkei
The first American autonomous ground vehicles are fighting in Ukraine - TechCrunch
Autonomous ship startup Kraken raises $175M at $1B valuation - silicon Angle
Seoul Physical AI Park Sells Out: Its Unitree Robots Carry an Unfixed Backdoor - Travelers Today
Humanoid robots controlled by surgeons did world-first operation on live pigs - ArsTechnica
Rhoda AI nearly triples footprint with Sunnyvale move - Silicon Valley Business Journal
East Bay Makers Club launches - OpenAI engineer is using his stock awards to launch new community makerspace in this East Bay city - Fox KTVU2
Business Insider’s Rya Jetha is interviewed by Ticker’s Ahron Young about the transformation of Silicon Valley to robots and physical AI. No new information but a good indication of how the reporters are seeing the overall landscape
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Many companies are reaching out to Silicon Valley Robotics about hosting events, outreach or hiring and we have a great community network, of people looking for work, of investors interested in deal flow and of technologists interested in learning about the latest advances.
Would you be interested in hosting the next Bots, Bevs and Devs? Or something customized specifically for your goals? Reach out here!
Robotics: Science and Systems - Sydney, Australia - July 13 - July 16
Open Sauce - San Francisco - July 17 - July 19
ROS By-The-Bay - July 17 - Mountain View
Bots, Bevs & Devs - San Francisco - Aug 5
Actuate - San Francisco - Aug 18 - Aug 19
Ruggedize - Salinas - Aug 26 - Aug 27
Bots, Bevs & Devs - tbd - Sep 2
SVR Investor Summit and Manufacturing Workshop - tbd - tbd
ROSCon Global - Toronto - Sep 22 - Sep 24
IROS 2026 - Pittsburgh - Sep 27 - Oct 1
Bots, Bevs & Devs - tbd - Oct 7
Bots, Bevs & Devs - tbd - Nov4
Bots, Bevs & Devs - tbd - Dec 2
IEEE Humanoids 2026 - Silicon Valley - Dec 6-9
The annual IEEE-RAS International Conference on Humanoid Robots is the internationally recognized prime event of the humanoid robotics community. The conference is sponsored by the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society and coordinated by the Technical Committee on Humanoids.
Send me your 2026 progress, plans or posts for potential inclusion in Robots&Startups. Or join the organizing team at Silicon Valley Robotics - bots&beer@svrobo.org
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