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]