This Humanoid Goalkeeper Can Save Penalty Kicks, Dodge Balls

Robots are getting pretty good at soccer. As humanoids become more agile, they are going to perform more agile saves and shots. Researchers have now taught a Unitree robot how to save penalty kicks and other shots. They used a single end-to-end RL policy to make saves with human-like motions.

This humanoid robot can also escape balls using jump and squat motions.

[HT] [credit: Junli Ren, Junfeng Long, Tao Huang, Huayi Wang, Zirui Wang, Feiyu Jia, Wentao Zhang, Jingbo Wang†, Ping Luo, Jiangmiao Pang]